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Full data for many 2009-2010 Christmas Bird Counts in New York State, including effort, weather, and participants' names, will be published in the June 2010 issue of The Kingbird, the journal of the New York State Ornithological Association--and all compilers of these counts are invited to contribute their data for publication as well.
Please refer to the standard template and instructions for CBC data submission to The Kingbird, provided here in two file formats for your convenience:
CBC template - MS Word format
CBC template - pdf format
There are several major advantages to publishing NYS CBC data in The Kingbird in addition to uploading data online to the National Audubon Society site.
1. The data published in The Kingbird clearly specify the species and subspecies reported, using uniform conventions across all the counts in NYS.
In contrast, the online database collects and presents data under a bewildering variety of partially overlapping names. This problem is not a mere inconvenience; it is an almost intractable obstacle to simple data analysis. For instance, if one wanted to quantify something as simple as the rise and fall of wintering numbers of Great Black-backed Gull on Long Island during the last century, one wouldn’t find this name in the database at all until some time after Lesser Black-backed Gulls began appearing in North America, at which point compilers began reporting the common species under its full English name. Records from earlier years would have to be deliberately retrieved under ‘black-backed gull species’ and then integrated in the analysis by brute force. Even worse, some birds continue to be reported under different names from year to year, even on the same count. For instance, one of Long Island’s most numerous waterfowl, Brant (Branta bernicla), appears in the database under no fewer than eight names: Brant, Brant (hrota), Brant (nigricans), White-bellied Brant, Black Brant, American Brant, Black Sea Brant, and Pacific Black Brant. A researcher wishing to analyze data for this species has no choice but to make separate queries for every one of these names, download the results of each query, and integrate the multiple data sets. The last task is extremely difficult because some of the names in question are simple synonyms or refer to completely distinct taxa, whereas others (e.g., ‘Brant’ and ‘Brant (hrota)’) overlap only in part. These ambiguities were formerly easily resolved by recourse to the published data, in which nobody could mistake the continuity between the 20,000 ‘Brant’ reported on a count one year and the 17,000 ‘Brant (hrota)’ reported there the next year, or what was meant by 3 ‘Towhees’ on a New York CBC. The tabular output currently available from the electronic database is another matter altogether, and even after laborious mining and reprocessing, many simple questions remain essentially impossible to answer.
2. "The Kingbird" strives to present full data for effort, weather, and participants' names--none of which can be obtained easily from the online database.
For instance, it is increasingly common for people to participate on a CBC as usual, but to decline to pay the $5 fee, forcing the compiler to omit these people's names (and in some cases, even any numerical trace of their effort!) from the data uploaded to the Audubon site.
3. Finally, one of the greatest pleasures of CBC participation comes from browsing through multiple counts of many kinds--rival counts for highest species lists, other counts held on the same glorious (or miserable) day as one's own count, counts that one used to attend in past years, or counts in which distant friends actively participate. Almost everyone I know laments the near impossibility of doing this via a series of carefully conceived, directed searches through the online database. In contrast, The Kingbird's CBC issue can be browsed as intensively or as casually as one wishes--and can be searched electronically also! (see: http://www.nybirds.org/KBsearch.htm)
Compilers frustrated with problems such as these have a recourse, through publication of their results in The Kingbird. Similarly, active CBC participants who are not compilers might consider offering to assist the compiler(s) of their favorite counts with the extra work associated with formatting the results for The Kingbird. |
Posted
1/5/10 