I am doing two volunteer herp survey routes this year for MN and the
rules are that I can't start before 1/2 hour past sunset and must be
done by 1:00 a.m. On one of my routes I had 0 found at any of the
ten sites during the early spring run but during the day when I was
locating the observation points there was a Northern Leopard Frog
calling from two points. Not much of a route as you would guess as
it is now all drain tile to ditch in corporate ag land. The other
route is new so I got to pick the points and am much more happy with
it having found multiple points with out of territory frogs. Please
don't tell the frogs as they don't know that.
Rich Peet
--- In Walter Knapp <>
wrote:
> Rich Peet wrote:
> >>One of my comments I got about my survey recordings was how I was
> >>getting rare recordings of birds, because the bird people quit at
> >>sunset. The distribution of night calling birds is much less well
> >
> > known
> >
> >>than daytime callers. I don't specifically record birds, though
I'm
> >>doing a little more since finding that out.
> >>
> >>Walt
> >>
> >
> >
> > Some of us are paying attention to the nite.
>
> I know that there are those that do pay attention to the night.
>
> The comment I got was from the person managing the local bird
survey,
> equivalent to the herp survey I play with. They are probably right
that
> the far majority of birdwatchers don't do night, so the night birds
are
> underrepresented in surveys.
>
> It's not just birds, a lot of herp folks quit at night too. I know
of
> several contract surveys for the military bases in the area where
the
> group doing the survey only worked from 9-5. When I've been out on
herp
> forays with groups it's hard to get them to go more than a hour or
so
> after dark at best. Some frogs don't even get going that quickly.
While
> others quit early. It amounts to going most of the night to be sure.
>
> Walt
>
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