Tuesday, June 05, 2007

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:

Larry said...

Thanks-I'll have a look.

Jochen said...

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.

Patrick B. said...

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.

Jochen said...

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!

Anonymous said...

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