I've spent time with Troy Guy and Jen Zamon of NMFS while they
do seabird counts from North Head, Pacific Co. They have an
array of labeled clickers and do 5min counts at regular intervals
over several hours. They invite folks (like me) to hang out with
them. Anything we might see gets noted in the qualitative notes,
though I don't know whether it's used for anything useful.
My approach probably approximates Phil's approach. I have a little
stopwatch which I use to make one minute counts. I usually try to
do at least three counts for any particular species over the duration of
the watch. I then take an average and multiply it by the number of
minutes I'm on watch. In between those watches I do focused scans
looking for anomalous goodies.
When I enter these numbers into a communal online database, I include
the average and the range in the comments bar.
Hmm... North Head, maybe I'll go that way this morning...
--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
The history of photons
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/northcoastdiaries/?p=3005
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