Ray Korpi says:

>I do know one thing--in the past four years running field trips for
>Portland Audubon, if I call a trip a "count" or a "Count primer" or
>"pre-count practice," my attendance goes down by 50 to 80 percent. A lot
>of people don't like the whole idea of counting, thinking it's overly
>scientific as it is, when the fact is when need people to drive, to tally,
>and to yell, "there's a bird,but I don't know what it is."
>RK

I have to say that our experience in Sequim is the exact opposite. Our
pre-count field trips are very popular -- last Saturday, with awful
weather, we had 23 people for our pre-CBC trip, our highest attendance in
quite awhile. Our other field trips frequently have fewer.

We have a nucleus of local folks that really takes our CBC seriously.
They seem to relish data collection, for which we are most grateful.
Partly, I attribute this to a large number of practicing and retired
scientists and engineers on the north Olympic Peninsula, who intuitively
understand the value of good data. It really helps when trying to put
together a clean count, and makes my job as compiler a lot easier.

Bob Boekelheide
Sequim