Get Better at Counting Birds
If you don't get the ABA PEEPS e-Bulletin, written by fellow blogger and birder extraordinaire Rick Wright, you should. The most recent edition has a link to two articles on eBird about how to count birds.
Counting 101
Counting 201
I'll be the first to admit that I don't typically count birds when I'm not doing some type of formal census. Reading these two articles makes me want to count birds more and to record them in eBird.
5 comments:
Thanks-I'll have a look.
I usually do count birds. It not only offers a good chance of obtaining interesting data on migration patterns, it also adds pleasure to birding by reaching e.g. a new record high count or just impressing others by saying you saw 150.000 birds today.
Jochen,
I'm definitely going to do it more. I usually don't do it because I suck at it. Practice will make perfect though.
Yes, practice is everything. This one fall 10 years ago I was regularly counting geese near a roost site with a friend. On evening I went out to count them while they came in to roost and the next morning - without knowing from each other - my friend went out to count them while they left. There were around 37.000 geese that particular night and both our independent counts were just a few hundred apart, which was pretty good! See, that's also a fun part of birding!
I usually count, but sometimes I don't and 90% of the time I report them on e-bird, I figure its one thing an average joe like me can do to help the birds I love to watch.
Vern
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