Subject: Re: Christmas Bird Counts
Date: Jan 4 20:04:48 1995
From: Christopher Hill - cehill at u.washington.edu
Re Peter's questions:
Some papers have been published using CBC data, though not many. American
Birds used to try to publish CBC based articles with the raw results in
the annual CBC issue when Bob Arbib was editor. It's hard for me to tell
how much use the data gets from governmental biologists and managers.
Perhaps someone else can comment on that. I still feel that the data set
is underappreciated, overcriticized and underused. And that the main
reason is difficulty of access. The one attempt to organize the data for
publishing in book form (Terry Root's book) was admirable in ambition, but
weak in execution.
You can answer an awful lot of questions with CBC data if you have the
time.
Chris Hill
Seattle, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu
On Wed, 4 Jan 1995, Peter Rauch wrote:
> I'm a little puzzled by a number of the observations and comments regarding
> the utility/validity of the CBCs. In particular, the comments range from
> stating how substantial and valid they are, to how little they are
> used/mined/organized (which to me suggests that there is little
> opportunity to assess their ongoing substantiality/validity).
>
> In the Feb 95 Birder's World, page 44, refering to the Cornell Lab of
> Ornithology/Bird Population Studies, it states that the "BPS researchers
> analyze data collected by participants in such popular projects as the
> annual Christmas Bird Counts ...."
>
> Surely, they and others (e.g., NAS?) over the years, must have
> published scientific articles describing the bases, strengths,
> weaknesses, appropriate/inappropriate uses, and other issues related
> to the (valid) use(s) of CBC data?
>
> Surely, the CBC can't still be just a quaint, interesting, intuitively
> appealing activity that has no rational basis (of credible
> scientific/analytic substance) for [and descriptions of] its protocols?
>
> In particular, with respect to the recent tweeters comments, is the issue
> of variability in the deployment of whatever protocols exist. Seems like
> there's a lot of concern about "sloppy" work, however unwittingly it
> might be happening. I wonder....?
>
> Anyone else reading this into the tweeters messages? Is it library
> literature search and reporting time? Anyone have this stuff at
> their fingertips?
>
> Peter
>