Noting a decline in the number of Breeding Bird Survey(BBS) routes being covered each year,
the Puget Sound Bird Observatory held their first annual training classes on ?How to run a Breeding Bird Survey ? in early May.

Don Norman, who has done Bird Banding Surveys for 19 years, and this year will actually fly back from New Orleans to do his surveys, found that BBS has no established training course, so he developed and taught two classes on? How Point Counts Work?.

He talked about some of the issues in detecting birds related to season, time of day, weather, noise, and error. Additionally he taught how to correctly record the data, including that there could be NO CHEATING outside the 3 minutes, because that would skew the breeding counts.

He emphasized how important BBS routes continue to be to the Partners in Flight?s ?North American Landbird Conservation Plan?.

Each class was a three-hours-long evening, followed by a three-hour morning field session. In the field students were given recording tips to track counts.
The goal was to give people the assistance they needed to assess their capability and skills. By understanding the process, and with joint practice in the field session, attendees gained confidence to proceed.

The classes were considered a success, as three-four routes are going to be run that weren?t covered last year.

One of the best ideas that came out of the class was to team up with someone and do two routes over a weekend, perhaps an easy one in the wheat fields and a more challenging one in the mountains. That way there is a recorder which can help in quality assurance!

Don strongly suggested a test-run of the route, one morning, perhaps not as early, to refresh your recognition of breeding songs, and ensure that all the pull-offs are still in the same places they say they are in the route packet.

He also wanted other interested people to know THERE IS STILL TIME TO GET A ROUTE!!!
--
Don Norman
Board member, Puget Sound Bird Observatory
Norman Wildlife Consulting(206) 799-1749.


From:?"Scott Downes" <downess at charter.net>
Date:?May 17, 2012 9:23:05 AM PDT
To:?<tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject:?[Tweeters] re: WA breeding birds - ups and downs
Reply-To:?Scott Downes <downess at charter.net>


Regarding the BBS, the other decline in WA is the number of routes being run each year. The attached link is the newsletter sent out to BBS volunteers. Look on
pages 7 and 8.
In 2011 only a little over 50% of the active routes in WA were conducted (56/91). Hopefully that number goes up. As Dennis demonstrated, wonderful data on breeding
bird
population trends are accomplished through BBS data collection. Maybe this email will spur some people to seek interest in conducting surveys on those routes that
have not had
coverage in the last few years.
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/bbsnews/Memos/BBSMemoSummer12.pdf
?
Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA


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--
Donald Norman
Norman Wildlife Consulting(206) 799-1749. ?
Local address:
803 Pine St. ? New Orleans, LA 70118