Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Counting Lessons

Back in January, eBird posted the first of a series of articles on conducting bird surveys, Bird Counting 101. It covered the basics of counting small and large numbers of a single species. The second installment is now online, Bird Counting 201. The second article deals with counting large numbers of moving birds and mixed species flocks.

The articles on counting birds are meant to support eBird, a project that collects data from birders. Individuals who sign up for accounts can enter their sightings through the website. The system also coordinates data collection for several affiliate projects. Data collected by the project is used to study range, distribution, and other questions. For more, see here.