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Announcements2012 Training WorkshopsOnce again, Mountain Birdwatch will hold May training workshops to prepare volunteers for their June adventures. All volunteers, new and old, are encouraged to attend any training workshop. New York/southern VT Workshop Vermont/New Hampshire Workshop Maine/New Hampshire Workshop Please RSVP to Judith Scarl (jscarl AT vtecostudies DOT org) if you plan to attend! 2012 Routes Now Available!January 2012 Happy New Year, Mountain Birdwatchers! With hints of snow and frozen lakes, it’s hard to believe that it’s almost time to select your routes for June of 2012. Our team of dedicated technicians set dozens of new routes in 2011, especially in NY and VT, so even if you weren't able to participate last year, we're sure to have a great route for you in 2012! We’ll start contacting our volunteers in February to confirm your route choices, so feel free to get a head start by checking out our Available Routes page. Please note that if you have already committed to surveying a particular route in 2012, that route will not be listed on the Available Routes page, but you can download updated route information on the Route Topos page. New ProtocolJune 2011 Hello, Mountain Birdwatchers! What an exciting start to the season, with thunderstorms and bitter cold followed by a beautiful weekend! I’m so glad to hear that many of you have started to scout your points and even conduct surveys- thank you again for all of your hard work and dedication to this program. There have been a few points of confusion over the past week, so this email is a compilation of the “frequently asked questions” I’ve received lately. Please do read through this before you head into the field, as I think it may resolve some common issues. 1. GPS point locations: Your route documents provide GPS point locations in decimal degrees (in my GPS, this shows up as hdd.dddd under the Location tab of my Settings option). If your GPS is automatically set to a different unit (for example, hours-minutes-seconds or hours-minutes), your GPS will believe that your points are ~20 miles away from where they actually are. Very confusing! Please check your GPS location settings before you head out to scout your points. 2. Cone Count: You can conduct the cone count any time in June; it does not have to be done immediately after the bird survey. I’ve been doing mine the night before my bird survey, when I hike in to scout the points. Cone counts can take a while before you get used to the protocol, so it’s much more relaxing to do these when you’re not worried about also getting point counts done in a timely manner. 3. Point Count Protocol: This has been quite confusing for those that didn’t attend a training workshop, so I’d like to go through this in more detail. At each point, you have four bulls-eyes to record your bird sightings. (Make sure you have enough for each point before you head into the field.) Each 20 minute point count is broken into 4 5-minute sections. For all birds except Bicknell’s Thrush, these four sections are meant to be largely independent. This means that you only have to keep track of individuals WITHIN a five-minute period, rather than BETWEEN five-minute periods. So, for example, if you hear a Swainson’s Thrush singing 30 meters away to the north at minute 3, and that same bird sings again at minute 7, you would note that you saw a SWTH on both the first and second five-minute cards. We do not want you to count the same individual twice within a five-minute period, but the count starts over every 5 minutes, so you may note the same individual a few times between periods. For all species except Bicknell’s, we ask that you note whether you first heard/saw them within 50 meters or outside of 50 meters. The protocol is slightly different for the Bicknell’s Thrush, although only during the first 10 minutes of the count. Your first two bulls-eyes have four distance bands rather than two; the additional distance bands are for Bicknell’s Thrush, because during time periods 1 and 2 (0 to 5 minutes and 5 to 10 minutes) we ask that you note whether you detected BITH at less than 25 meters (distance category 1), 25-50 meters (distance category 2), 50-100 meters (category 3) or greater than 100 meters (category 4). We also ask that you keep track of each individual BITH throughout the 10 minute period. Here’s an example. You hear your first BITH to the north at a distance of 35 meters at 2 minutes 15 seconds. You write BITH1 on your data sheet in the appropriate location, and next to that you write “2H” to indicate that you heard the bird in minute 2. You hear that bird again at 4 minutes 38 seconds, still to the north, at about 30 meters. Next to your initial observation in the bulls-eye, you write “4H” indicating that you heard the bird at minute 4. You hear another BITH at 4 minutes 51 seconds, this one from the southeast at 60 meters. Mark “BITH2” on your data sheet in the third distance band, and write “4H” next to this observation. At 7 minutes 34 seconds, you hear this bird again, still from the southeast, this time at 40 meters. Mark “BITH2” on your data sheet (to indicate this is the same BITH as before) in the second distance band, writing “7H” next to it. After 10 minutes, treat BITH like any other bird; you don’t need to keep track of individuals outside of the 5 minute periods and you’ll only note 2 distance categories. 4. Point Count Data Sheets: During each point count, you ONLY need to record your bird observation in the bulls-eye. After your point count, you can tally your sightings and record them in the boxes at the bottom, but you don’t need to write anything in these boxes during your count. I hope this clears up some of the confusion about the new protocols. Thanks again for working your way through these new guidelines. As always, please feel free to email or call me if you have any questions, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy mountain birding! Best, DendroicaApril 2011 I’d like to recommend an amazing new resource for anyone wanting to learn to identify the Mountain Birdwatch species. Dendroica is a website recently released by Environment Canada and the USGS Breeding Bird Survey office- it’s one of the most comprehensive audio- and visual-ID guides I’ve seen for North American birds. It was designed to help students, volunteers, and professionals improve their bird ID skills to conduct more accurate surveys for avian monitoring and research. Best, |
 PO Box 420• Norwich, VT 05055 • 802.649.1431• info@vtecostudies.org © VCE 2011 |