US Breeding Bird Survey (1 Viewer)

Hi all,

I did my first BBS Survey this year in CT - stepping into the breach - so the run was a week/ten days later than optimal. Not a bad day out but pretty tiring - a long day starting at 4.00 to be out in time to get to the Route before dawn. Highlight of the day was a Barred Owl being mobbed by a furious group of Blue Jays as well as 2 very cute Fox Cubs and a Coyote.

Historical data for my route can be found at:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/rtena24.pl?18013

has anyone else on BF run one this year? If so where and what route. It'd be interesting to peruse the data.

Luke

Hi, Luke,

I've been wanting to do one but I've had so little luck finding nests on our own property, I'd probably totally suck at trying to find them in the forest proper. So I've never participated in the official BBS counts. Guess I should give it a try since I'm already out there on other surveys anyway, where I coincidentally find nesting birds (which are all noted, just not officially for BBS purposes).

Yeah, being on station before dawn is harrowing, especially if one of the routes is an hour from home, which one of my neotropic migrant routes is. Ugh!

Hi Katy,

They actually don't expect you to find nests or even note nesting behaviour (food carrying etc). I think the assumption is that if the bird is there in June it's breeding (maybe runs are a little earlier in southern states I don't know). You do have to make note of uncommon finds and I assume that some decision is made on including these birds - for eg I very much doubt the 1st summer Mississippi Kite I had near here last week would make it onto a BBS list for CT.

My route is about 45 mins from home - I could tell I was tired by the end of it when I was trying for the life of me to work out what bird was calling behind me and realised it was a Northern Cardinal - lol (probably number 50 of the day).

Luke

Oh, man, isn't that the worst, when you get so tired you can't even discern the songs? Last year, I'd had a great streak of good weather with no wind, and did six days in a row of surveying on all 3 of my routes. By the middle of the last section, I was just so beat and frankly so sick of concentrating so hard on so many hours of constant effort, I remember standing there, listening to the cacophony, and was having a hard time telling a Hepatic from a Western Tanager from a Black-headed Grosbeak!!! That's when I decided that regardless of the weather, a break is needed just so that what you're hearing sounds fresh.

Is your BBS work through Audubon or Cornell or...?

Hi Katy,

It's the US Geological and Candadian Wildlife one: http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/

Luke

I run three BBS routes each year in Texas. I do two local routes. When our state coordinator posts his list of vacant routes, I volunteer to run one in a part of the state that I don't get to very often. Last year, I did a route south of Marfa, way out in west Texas, not too far from Big Bend National Park. It was a route full of Cassin's and Black-throated Sparrows, Lesser Nighthawks, and other birds found in the Chihuahuan Desert. Two Burrowing Owls were the bird highlight of the day. I think that we saw three other vehicles the entire 24.5 miles, so we certainly had solitude as well.

I hope that all birders of a certain level of experience will volunteer to do BBS routes in their states/provinces. It's one way of giving something back, and it really helps to document the richness of the avifauna in given area. Since the methodology is standardized, the data is considered some of the most reliable of the "citizen science" projects, so the numbers can be used in scholarly work on bird distribution and movement, etc.

Steve in Houston

Thanks for the link, Luke. Looks like there are only six routes in all of AZ that aren't already assigned! Fortunately, two of them are in the northern half of my county, but of course my long, narrow county stretches from the center of the state clear to the Utah border! Egads.

I like Steve's idea of deliberately choosing a route that gets you where you otherwise wouldn't go very often if at all. May just do that, since both unassigned routes in my area are on the Navajo reservation and at least one includes a wetlands, surprising for me to learn as that's one arid, canyon-y but beautifully desolate part of the state -- the gateway to Monument Valley.

It's probably too late to get involved this year if June is the target month for BBS surveying, but I'll toss my hat in the ring for next year. I already do a three-route Neotropic Migrant Bird Survey for the USFS each spring in addition to other backyard "citizen science" projects throughout the year. Just have never done a BBS before, but now that Luke's talked me into it...

streatham said:

Hi Katy,

It's the US Geological and Candadian Wildlife one: http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/

Luke

Click to expand...

Hello Luke
I clicked on that link and saw came to a website that I have visited before.
Do you you know if the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is the official wildlife research center of the United States?
Also, you see coyotes in CT? How often?