S1: <WRITING ON BOARD> and it's called, B-B-S. and this was started, um, in nineteen sixty-six, and basically in response to exactly the kind of thing that Shelly was talking about. um in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, we were using, a number of um very toxic chemicals in a very uh regular way one of them being D-D-T. and it was found that, D-D-T affected, the calcium production of a number of bird species, and most notably is the Bald Eagle. that's the one that people hooked onto as our national symbol. but other species um such as pelicans, cormorants, Peregrine Falcons and there's a a much longer list. and, it was noted actually by one person who was working on eagles and was climbing into their nests, to band young and he was finding these very thin-shelled eggs, eggs that were laid with no shell at all, and he began to report it and as a result of that people began looking at population trends an- and monitoring the birds. well Fish and Wildlife Service, after this happened and they found out about all these other species oh osprey is another example. um that had been affected, and were declining in number. Fish and Wildlife Service was, i don't know shocked embarrassed. they had no way of knowing, no way of measuring, population changes. and that led them to institute this breeding birds survey which goes on every June and they have a a a very extensive, team of people, throughout the country, primarily volunteers. some are professional, uh people who are, paid to go out and run these survey routes. but there're, particular specific survey routes, that are, are, randomly located throughout, um the U-S and and North America. and people go and, do a very similar thing as to what you did, uh follow a particular route and record everything they see and hear in a certain time block. and then all this information goes back to Fish and Wildlife Service and they put it into a big computer database. so they now a- starting in nineteen sixty-six are equipped to do this kind of monitoring. so we've got, we've got the monitoring of habitat changes that Susan talked about. we've got this big-scale kind of monitoring to, identify, population changes before it's too late or, or at a time when people, can, track back to when the decline occurred and initially it was in response to D-D-T but it can be in response to anything. any other reasons that, uh monitoring, or knowing how many numbers there are is important? <P :07> well, simply from a, you know basic, science question, of how over time do uh population changes occur? and, you're going to have, changes occur naturally. you're going to have a lot of factors, other than, uh toxic chemicals that may affect, uh bird populations people are very interested in are birds responding to climate change? um climate changes temperature increases decreases whatever the case may be. um, it's a good way of monitoring, um, maybe single species. or or a handful of species there's been a lot of concern about, forest bird numbers. in relation to, practices by the timber industry for example. you may have an endangered species, you want to monitor, i do a census type, not like what you did but, we census every year for Piping Plovers. um, there may be, basically kind of an aesthetic reason, for, knowing what is there. if you were hired by, a park, national park state park, as an ornithologist or as a, as a vertebrate biologist, most parks have bird lists. but a lot of places don't, especially if you got in on a new park, often the_ one of the first assignments for people who uh are in the Peace Corps, and are, have a job at_ in a national park is to go out and make a list what's out there? so, this, uh some of these techniques i'm gonna talk about will um give you the skills or at least the knowledge to know how to go about doing this. and the method we used this morning is one. if you have a, huge area and you wanna be able to sample it wanna have an idea of what's out there, you need to have, some kind of a technique. every time we go out on a field trip, we in a sense, um, we walk a transect. we don't have these spot, locations where we stop. specific locations points. um but we walk a transect and we record everything that we see and hear. one visit, we may not have a very good picture we've got kind of a little glimpse. if you do it over a ten-year time period, it gets to be better and better. or if you do it multiple times during one season. so, the question of why census i think we've covered and the kinds of questions that you ask the typical questions are, how many individuals? how many different species? there are a lot of other kinds of questions, um, that you could be asking especially if you're collecting information over time. okay the next thing that i wanna ask you, when you were out there, and you were collecting the data there were probably a lot of things that went through your mind, about you know am i doing a good job here? am i_ is this accurate? um w- what were the kinds of things you worried about or what are the things that you can think of right now, that may not have given you, as accurate a picture as you wanted, of, what the bird community is? let's say that the assignment, let's say you're employed here all year round. and, your assignment was to, um determine species diversity and abundance at the two sites. you went out today. what, was good about what you did today and what, doesn't answer that assignment or doesn't complete the assignment...? okay. Sheila?
S2: because maybe we only have um we don't know all the birds that possibly could be out there we may be missing (xx) 
S1: okay, so possible biases when you're doing this and these are, important, to be aware of. so, simply your skill, right? I-D skill, is one. something else. Katrina? 
S3: uh you never know if, um you know you think you hear one bird and then another one in a different location but you don't know if the bird, just like flew there or what so if like in terms of abundance. 
S1: a real important one and that is, um, i would say your s- your study design one of the issues involved is uh double counting anything else about study design?
S4: depending on how far birds are away they might be out of the habitat or, hard to I-D. 
S1: okay so, um, [S4: mhm ] something um representative... sampling uh i mean did did we do a good job? did did you get a good, uh, good sample at Colonial Point? did we do a good job sampling at Riggsville? well what were our boundaries? we made a line through there but but did we really talk about, exactly what is it we're trying to sample? no we didn't. we just kinda went through there. are we trying to say this is representative for a county? is it representative for one particular habitat one piece of land? so that's a, that's a problematic thing that if this were our assignment we'd wanna go back and, set some specific boundaries and then look to see, that we really were sampling all the appropriate habitats. anything else? Mary? 
S5: i find it hard to tell how many exactly that you hear if you hear more than one say you hear like many, of one particular type of bird or like crows or something, cawing in the background it's hard to tell how many exactly there are. 
S1: okay so, 
S5: or even to guess. (xx) 
S1: um, ho- what would we put this under? in part maybe, you're under skill if the more practice you had you might get better at it, i think even better would be, under study design and, what, we did was we basically had at Riggsville, it's a transect with your points all along here. and you did the same thing at Colonial Point, and, what happened, and i purposely did this, is that you were doing this at a, a tenth of a mile apart. it's too close isn't it? not only is it too close because, we didn't set boundaries, um we didn't set boundaries so that makes it too close it's too close anyway a tenth of a mile, you can hear, the loud calling or singing species. so that was a problem with study design, and um, the other thing, that's problematic, is that you were doing what? you were walking this line and one of the things you worried about as you were pushing those Chipping Sparrows ahead or you were [SU-F: mhm ] Chip- you know you were saying oh man i think, you know i think that was the one we saw back there. so how do you, how do you deal with this? what we were talking about was a_ what we did, what_ were point counts... <WRITING ON BOARD> counts, along, a transect... how could you change this? what would you change to um avoid the problem of double counting? of being too close? <P :04> pretty easy. 
S6: move out your points.
S1: okay you could, you could make your points further apart, number one, you can also do what about the distance you're collecting data? this is what Mary was worried about too. you can put what? 
S7: (set) (boundaries) 
S1: you can put a boundary. you can say within fifty meters within a hundred meters. now that may, that adds a little bit of a problem to it because, you know well what's fifty meters? you know how do i know that? well that's where some skill comes into it. if you_ if these are points that you're gonna be visiting on a regular basis, when you first set them up, you could go out, and flag off, what fifty meters was. within very short order, if you're working with a distance like fifty meters or a hundred meters, you're gonna get a good sense of what it is. i'm gonna ask Chuck cuz he's done a lot of point counts. what what were your distances?
S7: um, well we didn't have any, set [S1: okay ] distances because we were doing spot mapping.
S1: okay. he was doing something else that i'm going to talk about i was thinking he was doing_ did point count. typically fifty meters is the distance. so that is gonna help you cuz it's gonna rein you in and you don't have to be worried, about overlapping you don't have to be worried about, you know, detecting something at a greater distance. the other thing that is typically done, um with, a, point count, so that you avoid pushing things from wo- you know one station to the next. um let's say out at Riggsville, you know, that we have a specific area that we were wanting to sample. if we looked at aerial photos, and we looked at the diversity of habitat let's say there's forest here and there little wetland over here, and, farm field here, just to make it three simple habitats, you'd wanna be able to, sample these, in proportion to what they, actually occurred in the environment. so if you put_ overlay the grid, over this, you could come up with, you know what percent is wetland what forest and so on. and based on that, the number of sample points that you would want, from each of these, and then on your grid which would be numbered, you could use a, a random numbers table or whatever method, to figure out where you were gonna sample. so let's say there should be two sample points, in the wetland, and maybe four here, and you know, maybe um, four here. so, you would randomize this, and then, you would randomize the time that you visited the order that you visited, so that you're not making a line and pushing things from one place to another, and so that you are, visiting some sites earlier, and then if you come back you switch that order so you visit them later. so there're all these little refinements that you can get into that help, avoid some of these biases. what are some of the_ what are_ you got any other ideas?
S8: some birds don't sing as much as others.
S1: that's a great one. <WRITING ON BOARD> simply the behavior... of a s- of, the species.
S8: and another thing is like uh, you know like a, Red-Eyed Vireo you're probably hearing the male singing. so do you count that as one bird or two birds? 
S1: well if you're if you are, doing a breeding season estimate, you typically would count it as two but you know that you know that might not be accurate. but i told you your assignment was to to, find out what was here, all year round. so let's go back he said behavior of the species some don't sing as often. some have very loud songs that carry tremendously. some are soft. how about something like a night hawk? we typically see those in the evening. how about owls? did we sample owls? no we didn't. ho- um there are some very secretive, uh marsh-dwelling species that don't say much of anything. so we really have, sampled here, to uh, for our convenience. we went there at a time that was convenient for us, we're dealing with species whose song_ we know by song and sight. if we wanted this to be thorough, we'd have to go back at other times and in fact people have, good protocol, for sampling at night, and sampling you know secretive species so you'd have to come up with a list of what all you thought might be there, and say okay is there anything here, that i that i probably didn't get out there this morning or i didn't i didn't uh, um specifically, address the species there because i didn't use th- the right methodology? so that's good. okay anything else?
S9: well, there was one bird that we heard like while we were walking, [S1: mhm ] and we didn't know if we were supposed to count him cuz he wasn't at the two points, like (xx) 
S1: okay well i- i mentioned i forgot to mention that again i said this before, but y- you do on on one of these point counts you_ no matter what happens in-between, they are not included, in the point count. um you, if you have something unusual you probably wanna write it down just because you wanna remember it. and you may and might include that in your report but for the specific analyses, you're only sticking, at the points. just doing the points.
S3: but then aren't you not getting a thorough like, thorough, sample of the popula- like [S1: i- ] of what's there?
S1: if um, let's say um there was a Bald Eagle. [S3: mhm ] that flew over, in between points. well, you know that would be important you certainly would write that down. if you were gonna_ if you did this sampling let's say you did it um five times during each season, and you continued it for five years, um, the Bald Eagle would show up again if it's an important part of the community. um and probably during one of your point counts. there is nothing wrong with doing, your your point count, census effort, and, collecting all the information, and later as part of the report adding, also in this area we observed a Bald Eagle. but, if you're going to, to approach, any kind of analysis of these data, in a rigorous way, you have to follow your rules. you can't say oh gee i really wanna put that Bald Eagle in there. but there are ways to incorporate it so you don't mislead, whoever it is you're you know providing your report for. um, let's see the only um_ two things that i would mention as also other things that may lead to a bias. um one is weather. if um, obviously if we've been out on a tremendously windy gusty day, you wouldn't've, seen what you did. and Chuck's grinning back there.
S7: yeah, cuz when we went out to Colonial Point two years ago it was just raining. [S1: yeah yeah ] the whole time.
S1: so um [S7: (pretty) much ] but, we did it anyway, and the number of species that they they found and just the number of individuals was a lot lower so weather's gonna be important. and when you're doing these census efforts, there're rules about weather. you don't go out when it's raining or when the wind is over a certain level. um, timing is important. we've already talked about it if you want to do breeding birds you don't do it in the dead of winter. or you don't do it in the middle of the afternoon so timing during the day and seasonal timing. if you wanna get a_ i- if you want a, a broad picture of what's there, throughout the year you've gotta sample at different times, not just i- in the summer. we woulda been better off if we would've done this exercise, when you first got here but of course you didn't have the skills. so that's why we waited. um, and then another factor is habitat conditions there are some, situations where, u- where the the colon- the people out of Riggsville, could see a lot further they could see better, may've been able to s- hear better, than those at Colonial Point, where you've got, the vegetation's blocking your vision. so some habitats are easier to sample in than others.
S10: for the habitat conditions, [S1: mhm ] um well there is like the chain saw going on (right) in the background [S1: right, okay ] during a couple of our points, so i think that made a difference too.
S1: goo- that's a real good point uh, what what else is going on, at a particular site? you may not necessarily be in a full wilderness condition. one thing that i was concerned about i've never had this happen before, there was a guy that drove down the road. and, he may have caused birds to disperse, um i don't know he may have pushed things in front of him. so there was a_ you put that with the chain saw and you had a couple of things that might have made you um concerned. okay, um i'm gonna hand out, this is you know how i always hand out these kinda little lecture guides. i held off handing it out because i had the biases written down (here) at the bottom. <SS LAUGH> so i've already talked about a few things here. but let's see let's send that right (xx...) okay so we've... i'll just wait till you get these.
R1: do you think you'll have any ex- extra copies of that? 
S1: i think so i think i did eighteen... i'll just give you mine.
R1: oh. are you sure? (it's) 
S1: yeah. i think i've got another one <P :18> everyone get one? now i have to go get (an extra) 
R1: it's not that it's not that important really 
S1: no i know there's some extras. aren't there extras back there?
S7: i've got, a copy of each, if you want, (something,) if somebody needs 'em i don't) 
S1: oh. no i think there are, evr- everybody_ are they still circulating? that's weird. he's gonna give you one. that's okay. (xx) okay. [R1: okay. (xx) (i don't know) ] [SU-F: (xx) ] i, i probably can do this without. um, okay so we've talked about why census? what questions are asked? we also talked about down there at the bottom <REFERRING TO HANDOUT> problems leading to bias. and then where it says large-scale counting techniques i mentioned the breeding birds survey, i'm gonna talk about a couple of other of those surveys in a minute. okay, um uh i wanna review and just talk about the different possibilities, under the area intensive sampling techniques. um, i talked about the transect count. that's what we did today. you can do a point count on a transect. so you can make the points like we did, and follow_ a transect simply means a route that you're going to walk. or you can do, basically like what we do on a field trip. we just walk along a route, and i use um, a pretty similar, route, each year. it depends on the weather and you know what we see and so on it may be, longer or shorter. but for each site that i visit. and we don't have a point count but we're recording everything that that we see and hear along that. so that also gives you, a good measure of what's in an area it is not as precise as a point count. because a point count you've got rules. you've got specific points, you're staying at a site for a specific length of time, you've got a distance. a framework within which you're sampling, so that from one year to the next you can go back and say well_ or one sample to the next, you know we d- i did this the same this time as i did last time. whereas on a field trip, when i_ if i were to put about five checklists in front of me, you know, it_ sometimes you've got a, a good place and you stay there longer than at another. so they're they're a lot of different biases, just using the checklist data but still over a long time period, they're pretty representative. so the transect count, can or cannot have a point, that you operate from. then i mentioned to you about the point counts, that are, very, rigidly set up. this is the typical, methodology, for people wh- if you got hired, you would typically be doing point counts or in a minute we'll talk about the spot mapping that, that Chuck, has had experience with. and in in a point count, you're typically looking at multiple species, you're wanting to know what, what all is there, and you randomize your, uh, the habitat so you get good habitat coverage. and it's for a fixed time period, and, in some studies, the goal may be to cover as big an area as possible and you may only visit those points once or twice a season. or if you want better coverage of a smaller area, you could go back ten times. a general, um, procedure now tends to be, uh fewer visits to, many sites. so there are are large-scale projects, going on, um, funded by a lot of sources, like uh, Fish and Wildlife Service. Forest Service in particular. um where, there are entire national forests. we're talking about thousands of acres that people are doing censusing in. they have huge teams of people. and they've randomized their points and people go out to these maybe just a couple times during the season, but they have hundreds of points that they visit, throughout a particular season, and then do this over you know several years.
S4: so are transect counts a type of point count? or not necessarily? 
S1: well, a transect count simply means walking a route. [S4: okay. ] i superimposed a point count on top of it. so that you would see those two methods. um if you were doing a study, that you wanted to publish in a high-quality journal, you would do the point count the randomized point count. i think you would be highly criticized if you were walking a transect, and doing a point count on it. um... the spot mapping, Chuck can i put you on the spot? [S7: yeah ] and have you tell them, [S7: um ] f- first of all i think uh lemme just preface this by saying, you know Chuck was in the class a couple years ago, he came into the class having an interest in birds so he was above average, birder he was good when he came.<S7 LAUGH> but he developed his skills in the class and continued to develop 'em through his interests. and then, following summer, you can tell them what the job was tell them how many people were involved and just you know kind of what your your, [S7: okay ] assignment was.
S7: um the Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project, was is the title of this. um, the whole research project and it's not just birds it got started, as a bird research project, um but there are people also studying plants, um invertebrates reptiles, you name it it's it's a huge project. um, just doing the birding, part of it um i lived with a dozen people, working on that at one location there was also another location forty-five minutes away um with another, i think fifteen people there there were twenty-seven of us, altogether, doing this project so it was, it's a large effort... <DEMONSTRATING ON BOARD> and we would go out to a plot um, every day and at just one of the plots, i remember they had it's actually a subplot. it was shaped, something like this and then it was, divided up. you know, something like this. and they each had a number you know they were one, two three and they were given, a random order, so that we weren't visiting, you know, every plot say you know every three days or every four days and we also had to, make sure that, when we, divided up who was going to these plots, that, somebody didn't do a plot, more than, three times. because we didn't want to, um put too much bias into it by having, one person go there, and maybe that one person can't hear, um you know a Pine Warbler very well, or one of the other vocal species that that they were looking for. um, and, you know there were, lines that were painted on the trees, and intersections were marked with flagging, um so we had a_ and i can show you, um everybody what i'm talking about this afternoon i have so- some of the stuff with me. um, we would take out in the field a map of the whole plot, and then one of the subplots that we were going to that day. and, maybe one for each adjacent plot so that if we got a little off course, we could get back on. um to where you were supposed to be but, basically you had, a piece of eight-and-a-half by eleven paper, and it had you know the north-south lines, but it also had topographic lines, that you could figure out where you were going and from where you were positioned, where a bird was singing or where you saw that bird, and you'd simply mark on there with different, um ways of marking it you would circle the, four-letter abbreviation for each bird um, that we used, that the American Ornithological Union has come up with, um, and... you know to avoid double counting the birds you would take, and walk around the whole plot, um but you didn't want to double over someplace that you'd already been so you'd wander around the plot. there were nice ridges and trails that you could walk on occasionally, but you didn't want to turn around and walk back on that trail. and if you did you definitely didn't wanna write down the birds that you heard, um unless it was something that you had not heard, going through there before because it may have been a bird that you counted it was just simply on the other side of the ridge. so it's moving and now you've counted it as two birds, when it was actually just one but it's moving within its territory. um, each subplot was visited, a minimum of seven times, um over the summer to get, the data that they needed they preferred ten times um because they were using that, data that we gathered each time, to, calculate the number of territories. uh within a a plot and within a a fairly large area. um, and with that they could figure out how many nests we had actually found, of those territories sometimes we found the nest, sometimes we didn't. um, and that was 
S1: but you made the assumption that if you had a territory there was [S7: we made the assumption. ] probably a nest there.
S8: there was probably a nest there um, that was, that was one of the hard parts was, you could go back, and if you knew we were going out to a certain plot the next day, you could go back and look at, the spot maps that people had done. you know, couple days before a week before two weeks before, and get an idea for what you were gonna see they were pretty similar throughout all the areas um, but you could also see where coverage was lacking. maybe certain times um, people would enter the plot from the same area, and take almost the same route well you know the next time you knew that you had to go in from a different direction and maybe cover a certain corner that people were missing. so that, you know you were getting a very thorough coverage and not missing any birds. um which was important for that.
S1: now how w- um, how were the questions that you were asking in this project different than what, what we did this morning?
S7: we were basically looking_ this morning, just you know taking a a basic survey, of what was there. um this study, um, was a a brainchild basically out of um doctor Fabourg at the University of Missouri in Columbia. and a an employee of the Missouri Department of Conservation, who wanted to look at habitat fragmentation, and a largely unfragmented habitat, a lot of studies have been done on you know in farm country and other heavily forested areas but nothing really has been done, you know in an, an uncut area and then come in and and um have, different logging um operations done there were plots that had, large clear-cuts, um you know and there was slash left all over the place. um, there were other plots and the clear-cuts were done to initiate an even-age stand so that you know every tree was cut down and then, once that grew up, the trees were no older than, you know, how long ago the trees had been cut so, in an uneven-age stand they had gone through and taken out, circular cuts, every so often and um, i'm not sure exactly how they determine size of these cuts they were, determined by the foresters um but they used, the techniques that they use for f- for f- foresting now. um some of it had to do with, you know was it a north-facing slope or a south-facing slope, um, you know the distance between some of the, uh the cuts in this uneven-age stand were a little bit different, um, but it's very similar to you know how they're cutting in other parts of the state right now so that's what, that's what they did you know i mean it wasn't, it's not like um you know a birder said okay let's cut here let's cut there, um that part of the project was given to f- foresters to determine and, you know we had to deal with that um and then there were other parts uh control plots, where no cutting was done at all. um and they were arranged differently in some spots, a clear-cut area was next to, um an uncut area or it was next to, um, an uneven-aged stand. and, you know that's something else to consider is, what habitat is next to, you know, the habitat you're you're working in? any questions? 
S11: yeah my question just relates to that like how big were the plots and then you know, when you, set them out in a grid, and you_ where their size was_ did you take into consideration what had been cut and what hadn't you know and where you you had patch and where you didn't?
S7: what do you mean? (in that) 
S11: oh well first the first question is like how big was your_ were the plots themselves you know like each grid section how, large an area were you working in? 
S7: um, i'm not sure the area of this_ of the subplot. um, i mean i know the the plots themselves were were large and
S1: were they all consistent in size? prox- approximately the same size? 
S7: they yeah they were they were pretty close.
S11: yeah did you put a grid, down on top of it? (xx) 
S7: yep yeah the the north-south and east-west grid lines were a hundred meters apart. [S11: okay. ] so i mean i could go back and you know look at a spot map and figure out approximately how much area there was (there) i don't remember off the top of my head. [S11: okay. ] right now 
S11: and then you_ were you saying that the subplots within the plot, [S7: mhm. ] then that you took into consideration [S7: now the the_ yeah. ] the cuttings? 
S7: th- the plots... th- they weren't square. [S11: oh okay ] um, they tended to_ the boundaries of them, like i had this drawn, here earlier. <WRITING ON BOARD> this boundary here followed, um, the edge of a wildlife reserve that we were living at. this, the whole plot was in a national forest a chunk of national forest Mark Twain National Forest, um, this boundary along here happened to follow along an intermittent creek... um, and they did that, because they didn't wanna have you know they wanted a representative sample of the habitat that was there they didn't want, something coming down... you know like this with the draw here and, an upland area over here, upland area here and upland area here and having that, comprised too much of the plot. um, part of it was also politics too i imagine with, you know how much, you could cut, for this study. um but it_ the national forest, where we were working in down there is_ it's a good chunk there are six units of it and we were, only working in a small part of it.
S1: (okay) thanks. [S7: (yeah.) ] um, i- i think you got the sense of what th- the method that that Chuck was involved in is a much more detailed method so you_ your other questions, that were were being, that you would have access to answering. things about density, um, uh his_ the focus in this study was on breeding birds, he didn't say it but i'm assuming that um, you wouldn't have loons down there but let's say loons flew over the plot, that's not even, that wouldn't even be of interest to what they're doing so instead of trying to get an overall survey, you ended up probably focusing on what maybe thirty species? twenty species?
S7: yeah probably closer to twenty. [S1: yeah. ] (yeah.)
S1: um and getting, u- um, much greater in-depth information so the spot mapping is another technique but it's used for different, um for different purposes. okay um if we come down to the total count, um... that is possible to do under a number of different circumstances and that's what we do with the plovers the numbers are so small about twenty-five pairs of Piping Plovers in the Great Lakes region, that we try to get a total count. and we do that by visiting historic sites, we know what the, um, habitat requirements are, and we have done this every year. does that mean that we get a total count? well we know, from a_ for, a number of reasons that that's not that's not the case there're places we can't get to frequently they nest on some of the outer islands and in the Great Lakes, there are probably some sites that we don't know about. but we do a pretty good job. we feel confident we do. so that's a total count example another total count example, is you've seen enough of colonial waterbirds to know they're they're concentrated in one area that's what we (tried) to do with the Black Terns. our methodology was, uh in a sense like a transect you know we we moved through and counted everything that we found. um, we weren't depending on vocalizations we didn't do any kind of spot mapping or spot, or point counts we just walked through an area tried to get a tota- total count you can do this for you know other species of colonial nesting birds that are all clumped together. um, so often for endangered species or those that are, or where the numbers are very small or or you've got Colonial birds that are all together for instance a, a Cliff Swallow colony you could easily get a total count. you can also use that method. for most species however, you_ if you're going to do something with with their numbers during the breeding season or otherwise, you'll have to, uh depend on some other randomized type of of sampling that's representative.
S4: so a total count is usually just for a single species not like a l- small habitat (xx) 
S1: right, right. a single species although an exception might, would be a lot of colonial, waterbirds nest where there're other species there might be three or four other species so you'd_ while you're there you may be, doing total counts. um, then finally this other method, um... there're, a lot of different kinds of methods that are basically specialized for species that are um are challenging for one reason, or another, um, often, people do nest counts of say Bald Eagles. in a sense that's a total count, but since eagles are s- are spread very widely throughout forested regions, um it's a sample of, of a forest that might be covered typically the national forests will fly and count their eagles. and the nests are up in the tops of the trees, historically they use the same sites, someone who's been doing this a lot, um, a- has a pretty, um good chance of recognizing new sites and so on Osprey is another one that's elevated high you can see it from the air. so an example of a, a sample that you can be, be doing from the air it's it's not really a_ it's not a point count it's not a transect it's um it's probably a subdivision of a total count you'd get the count and then you'd extrapolate that on the rest of the, of the region or or similar habitat. and, then i also alluded to, um sampling with vocalizations. one way to sample for owls, is essentially you could you could uh, do the point count you could randomize your habitat go to points at night, play a playback and listen for owls. do that in a wetland for marsh-nesting birds. so these different subdivisions that_ of methodology. now, i'm gonna say just a couple things about these large-scale counting techniques but one_ i'm ending here talking about the sampling methods. what i've given you today is just an overview of the methodology used. if you're working for somebody else if you're a grad student setting up your own program, you really want to investigate, the approach that you wanna take. because it's gotta be comparable. and it has to be something that's acceptable to other people, if it's going to be used in any kind of a useful way. and if you're working for someone else, they're gonna lay it out and say these are the rules this is what you do. if you're, given an assignment say you're hired by a state park or if you're a grad student an- and you wanna incorporate some kind of sampling methods, you need to do a number of things you need to get into the literature. an- and see what people are doing what methods are you using? and you need to talk to other people. who are working on similar problems or, say if you're in one state park then you find out what's been done in other state parks. so it's not something you just jump into and you know pick up a book (xx) and say oh i think i'll do this. um, because, there's been a tremendous amount of time and energy that's gone into, developing the methodology and once you choose something you can s- uh standardi- or you can modify it a bit to suit your own needs but, i can't overemphasize the importance of, uh choosing a method that is going to be accepted by the larger community of people that you may be uh communicating with. before we break for lunch, i wanna mention two other large-scale counting, techniques or programs that you need to know about i mentioned the Breeding Birds Survey, any of you could be involved in the Breeding Birds Survey. through_ you could contact the local Audubon group, you could contact the D-N-R state D-N-R and say hey i'd like to be involved in one of these breeding bird surveys, and they'll be delighted to give you your own route, which you could follow, until you die every year. <SS LAUGH> some people do these routes over and over and over again, and it's on one day um, well you choose a day in a particular time period in June and um follow this route and just are recording again what you see and hear. um the two other things that i wanted to mention, there's something called a Christmas Bird Count that was started by National Audubon Society at the turn of the century, and it came from, um the fact that uh people in the east coast, um, a lot of people went out right before Christmas for Christmas hunt. to you know bring game to the table. and, there were, individuals who were interested in bird conservation back at the turn of the century who, said well why don't we do a count instead of a hunt? so it was a small group of people, probably <SS LAUGH> fairly (wealthy,) um, and and over time it has grown to be a national effort. so there are literally hundreds of chapters of_ state chapters and local chapters of National Audubon who go out during a particular two week period, um the end of December. most of the counts i think are done around like the fifteenth sixteenth of December cuz, you know the holidays come in there and people get, distracted. um, but it's a group of people that go out to a specific area, they subdivide the area it's a big social occasion very competitive in some places people have a great time, and they go out and you would have your particular area that you would cover you don't have a_ you're not doing any spot mapping you're not doing any point counts, you're not doing any transects you're just going out and recording everything that you see and hear. and there may be_ some of these Christmas count groups may have a hundred people. some of them may have one. you know it varies. and, people go out and let's say you have more than one, typically at the end of the day it's a twenty-four hour period you come back assemble at somebody's house and you have a potluck and you go through the list and you figure out what all you s- you saw, and heard and whether you did better or worse than last year whether you had a new species it's a, highly social thing then all the information gets sent into National Audubon and gets collated. and that, all of those data are available to anybody for any particular reason. and probably the most significant product, is one that was done by somebody who you've had a class from or you will and that's Terry Ruth that, um in the School of Natural Resources in Ann Arbor. and, she actually um, used the Christmas count data to look at, wintering patterns of birds and no one had really done this before they'd done kind of isolated studies but she did a continent-wide, study now there's some limitations this is only done in the United States which is frustrating. because we don't, we don't know what the distribution of a lot of bird species are once they_ those that are migrants that are leaving the U-S but, this is a wonderful product, and it has individual maps for, all the species um and they_ it also shows um, um density patterns for observations and so on so i'll l- i'll put this in the other room so you can take a look at it, um and she was she also related this to climate data. so, this was the first product that was produced that really had, good information on wintering, uh behavior and distribution of all the species in North America based on the Christmas count data. so this w- this is a is an essentially an atlas it's called of Wintering North American Birds so this is a great resource to know about. if you happen to be studying any particular species doing a report for class, take a look at this cuz it's got great info and that came from the Christmas count. um, oh shoot how did i do this? i grabbed the wrong book. anyway i'll bring the right one up. but there's a book that looks a lot like this one, <SS LAUGH> very much like this one as a matter of fact in the library and it's the Atlas of Michigan Breeding Birds. and, it was put together from the Breeding Birds Survey, data just from Michigan, and every single species in the state, breeding species has a map. and it also has a page, just devoted to basic biology, um population trends, habitat and so on. so it's a wonderful resource and i wou- what i wanted to do was open up the MIRLYN page so you could see it but since i got the wrong book i can't do that. um, but it's based on, a large um, survey effort and they're able to talk about trend patterns and also, um you know using mapping technology to actually mark uh where breeding has been documented. so it's a a very very useful um book. birders have been, and professional ornamen- ornithologists have been recording, um their observations for, years back into the eighteen hundreds late eighteen hundreds there're a lot of good documents. and over time of course things have become more and more sophisticated, and now um fortunately we're at a point where, we can produce products that are really large scale and and and very accurate in in their um portrayal of huge data sets. so that's um many states are going towards these, atlases, um and there are national efforts at atlases and so on so these are are big-scale um examples of how, data that you might collect as an individual or just a few, individuals can contribute to a much larger picture and then of course the other use of these census techniques um, would be for general education purposes, as in a state park or for your own research or someone else's research. okay. it's time to go to lunch i'm sure you have a lot of questions right now. <SU-F LAUGH> um we're gonna meet actually at quarter after one, in the alumni room. in air-conditioned comfort.
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