Mike and tweets,
A couple of comments. First walking as much as is possible in your areas is
always a great thing. I'm sure there are high correlations between number of
songbirds recorded and how many miles participants walked. As mike pointed
out very easy to hear chickadees, wrens, sparrows while walking; only a
portion of these will be found at predetermined stops.
Yes, reduction of gas consumption is a very good goal and in many circles
(especially urban circles) very possible. Another item though that was not
mentioned here is to carpool, carpool, carpool for teams! Rather than
redesigning routes (more on that in a sec) compliers planning for dividing
teams into smaller groups everyone can ride together will save lots of fuel.
If we need to drive roads looking for raptors, let it be done by 1 car, not
2 cars following each other... Smaller areas (subdividing) also cover the
count areas better.
BUT, while I don't aim to start a long drawn out thread we need to look at
the scope of the cbc.
On redesigning... as most know the cbc is a survey not a census (thus
hopefully nobody really believes a cbc circle counts every single bird in
the circle). For the survey to be valid, methods from year to year need to
remain as constant as the volunteers will allow (this is after all is done
by us birders and not paid biologists and we all want to have a fun day
birding and not a strict scientific method). Drastic changes for the sake of
gas consumption I hope wouldn't throw off overall methodology. So... I'm
hoping mike meant the following (please let me know if not):
try to reduce overall gas consumption and spend more time outside of a
vehicle but not to go so drastic that you make this year's results not
comparable to other year's. I know I'm a bit sleep deprived these days being
a new dad but I'm pretty sure raptors are indexed by raptor's seen per mile
covered. Would this noticeably affect this?

Looking forward to the cbcs I get to help out on,

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA