Hi Philip,
I don't know for certain why the GBBC is done in late winter, (in North
America), but I suspect that you're right in saying it is an attempt to monitor
resident birds exclusive of the neo-tropical migrants that arrive from Central
and South America in April and May. The GBBC was conducted for several years in
North America only, before it was expanded to include other parts of the world.
I do know, however, the origin of the Christmas Bird Count (CBC). In the late
1800's there was a tradition of the "side hunt" on Christmas Day. The idea was
to go for a walk in the afternoon and shoot as many birds and small mammals as
you could! The CBC was proposed as an alternative in New York in 1900. It has
grown from that one group in New York over 100 years ago to the tradition it is
today. 60 000+ people participated in 2013.
In the breeding season the North American equivalent is the Breeding Bird
Survey (BBS) program. This is less publicised because it requires participants
to be able to identify birds by song. So casual birders, cannot participate.
Gary Davidson
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:05:24 AM, Philip Veerman <>
wrote:
There appears to be a tradition both in Europe and USA of doing annual
Northern Hemisphere bird counts in (the middle of) winter or as a christmas
day count. And publishing these results. It perplexes me too as to why they
do that then. Maybe because it is easier without all the (more difficult to
identify) migrants such as the warblers, that would be present in their
summer. Maybe they are interested in tracking the population changes of
resident species.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From:
Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
Laurie Knight
Sent: Sunday, 16 February 2014 3:22 PM
To:
Subject: No submissions from Darwin,Broome or the bulk of the
outback for the Great Backyard Bird Count
So far about 31,000 checklists have been submitted today. (I put in
two for my neighbourhood). If you look at the map
(http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/livesubs?siteLanguage=en
), you can see the checklists being submitted in real time -
obviously a lot coming in from the USA. There is fairly good coverage
of NZ and southern India, but outback Aus observations are few and far
between.
The number of species reported is currently 2713, so they are a
fair
bit behind last year's total of 4258 species. I suspect there are
over 200 Australian species that could easily be added to the list by
people who have been out this weekend (any pelagics?)
The one question I have is why did the Audubon society choose February
(the depths of winter in the northern hemisphere) for its annual
birdcount? Perhaps they were hoping for strong participation rates
from southern observers?
Regards, Laurie.
On 13/02/2014, at 6:19 PM, Laurie Knight wrote:
> The Great Backyard Bird Count is Feb. 14-17. According to the
> following article, birders in 100 countries will be participating ...
> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/11/global-backyard-b
> ird-count/5233847/
>
> The deal is that participants do 15+ min bird list for a geographic
>
location and load their sightings on www.birdcount.org
>
> Regards, Laurie.
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