Gary, do you have a reference for this information? I'd never heard of the
"side hunt".
Regards
Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow
PO Box 71, Darwin River,
NT 0841
043 8650 835
PhD candidate, SCU
Vice-chair, Wildlife Tourism Australia
On 17/2/14 7:05 AM, "Gary Davidson" <> wrote:
> 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: [Birding-Aus] 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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