WARNING, this turned out to be very long. But it contains many pertinent
topics: Christmas Bird Count data, Washington's Breeding Bird Atlas,
free data from the gov't, the future of NBS, future needs for Washington
birders, and a little politics.

On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Don Baccus wrote:

> I think it is too bad that no effort has been made to make CBC data
> electronically available, but the expense involved in data entry would
> be immense. Even for a single year.

Au contraire, data for at least the past 25 IS available, and what's
more, IT'S FREE (sort of free, we taxpayers have already paid for it).
Anybody who wants the CBC data can get them by contacting Brett Hoover at
NBS, his e-mail address is:

HooverB at mail.fws.gov

What you get is a list of the circles, giving a lat-long for each (easily
imported into a GIS this way), and the full database, which can be
related to the circles, plus a document with a little instruction.

The data were entered and the database was constructed under contract by
John Shipman of New Mexico Tech. He has a few other interesting projects
completed, and runs what I assume is his own business, Zoological Data
Processing, as well as being a lecturer at NMT. To contact John, e-mail at

js at minos.nmt.edu

or browse his world-wide-web pages on any WWW interface, and go to:

http://nmt.edu/~john/

I have the files sent by Brett Hoover, if anybody wants copies, e-mail me
and I'll forward them to you. I haven't used any of it yet, so I can't
tell you how user-friendly it is. You'll have to know a few things, like
how to unzip files, etc. They are all public-domain and not copyrighted.

Additionally, any of you who are not on Birdchat are missing out on Sam
Droege's periodic postings of species population trends on our
continent. I am surprised he has not responded to the CBC data
discussion, but I understand he is in the middle of an office move, and
may not be getting e-mail right now. He presents CBC and BBS data and
discusses his interpretation of the trends, as well as attaching the
results for your own scrutiny. If you want to contact Sam, he's at:

DroegeS at mail.fws.gov

He may not respond for awhile, though, as he's moving.

> I know that HMANA, the organization that collates raptor migration data
> for North America, has not entered their mound of data which amounts to
> a molehill in comparison with CBC data! This despite the use of standardized
> keypunch forms used to by counters to report to HMANA.

This is a huge problem with most databases. The project I work for is
trying to create distribution maps for all species in Washington. I'm
doing breeding birds. Habitat maps are created based on satellite
imagery, and then refined with known geographic locations. Despite the
fact that I have over 300,000 records for Washington, I still find my
database falling short for many regions, especially northeastern
Washington and the Palouse. The reasons are clear to me: The northern
Okanogan and northeastern portions of the state are very remote, and many
areas could only be censused by backpacking several miles. As for the
Palouse, who wants to bird in a wheat field? Another big 'hole' in my
database are the lowland 'managed' forests of western Washington,
especially in Pacific, Wahkiakum, Grays and Mason counties. The Olympics
are well-covered, but only a few miles south, there is NOTHING. Who
wants to bird in such an ugly area, even if it is more speciose than all
the old growth in the Olympics?

> However, there is a new development which I find exciting, as it attacks the
> problem at the root. With some funding from the National Biological Survey

Don't count on the NBS doing much more, as the Republicans have sworn to
cut it within their first 100 days, as well as the USGS, an agency which
has provided a great deal of info for America, and has spawned some very
'good' science. They have a rather large contingent of paleontologists,
just get on the dinosaur list and see. Ironically, this is done because
the Repubs want to cut government, but the NBS actually DID cut
government. It would have combined the research arms of all natural
resource agencies, cutting the well-known problem of redundant studies in
government agencies. NBS was not created by Congress, and they can
easily kill it. The Repubs, in their zeal to cut governnment, will
create more when they kill NBS.

> Anyway, the best way to get data electronically entered is to do so when
> the data is captured. Obviously, this doesn't attack the problem of
> making past data available, but at least the paper mountain will stop
> growing at some point.

I went to Grand Teton NP last fall, and was amazed at their bird-list.
It looks more or less like your ordinary Park bird list, except that it
was also a self-sealing envelope, with business reply mail on the back.
After you checked off what you saw, noting the time, day, locations, and
some climatic info, you could drop it in the mailbox, and would end up in
Wyoming's non-game department of their state wildlife agency. An
approach like this would be great for Washington. Earlier this year I
discussed such an approach with Gene Hunn, Hal Opperman, Kelly Cassidy,
and Steve Hallstrom, all fellow Tweeters. This would require funding at
some level, but think about it. Birders and researchers should be able
to record their findings on electronic 'bubble-sheets', much like taking
the GRE or SAT, and also bubble in the date, year, time, and
Township/Range/Section. The idea of course is to get as accurate a
location in space and time for each record. There are many problems of
course, what do you do when you see an unID'd Accipiter? Or gull
hybrids? There is more detail, and decisions could be made about what
level is needed. But if I could have just 1% of all the Tweeters
birding knowledge at my computer, I'd be golden.

____________________________
Mike Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu