[mou] Comments on MOURC, long

[Alt, Mark]

I am reminded of the Hertzel Brothers' excellent effort in locating
Long-eared Owls a few years ago. If you look for them in the right way
in the right place, they are there. If people are really up in arms
about the status of a bird's population in MN, they can impact it.  A
"King Rail" task force could be formed to actively search for them. A
"Dipper" team could head north. A concerted effort to find a species
will always be beneficial to the people who do the search, and what you
seek to find is usually not the outcome, but the outcome will be
interesting, worthwhile and significant.  If anyone wants to form such a
search team(s), I am sure MOURC and the avid listers in the MOU would
welcome the data and the opportunity to take part. I am critical of some
elements of MOURC (mostly that they won't take me), but of this I am
sure. They are only as thorough as the data that is sent their way.  It
is up to us to send them more complete data.  I have participated in 2
BBS in 2 states and would love to get a transect to do in this state. If
anyone has a methodology and an idea of where to go to find King Rails,
let me know.  It can't be much harder than chasing Yellow Rails in
McGregor, and I considered that fun. I challenge people to proclaim
their hypotheses and then set out for empirical evidence to substantiate
it. What species should be offered up for such a process? Sign me up for
both King Rail and Dipper(2 separate searches). There are Warblers that
are not regular in the state that we could find on territory if we
looked hard enough, as well.=20
	1. Mike Hendrickson is right, get out with binos and look at
birds. =20
	2. MOURC is right also, if you see something noteworthy and you
want it to be a part of the written history of bird
sightings in this state, use the format and to the best of your ability,
capture the sighting.=20
	3. Jim Williams is also right, many birds listed do not reflect
their potential occurrence in the state. By doing more
of what Mike and MOURC desire, Jim concerns can be addressed as well.

If we concentrate more on our shared interests and passions, positive
outcomes from our own frame of reference are probable.=20
I do not think a possible outcome is that we will all agree, but that we
can be aligned more or less. The glass is half full for me today. I
better not partake of its contents any more until it is refilled.

Mark Alt
Manager of Project Management
Best Buy Co., Inc.
Supply Chain Transformation Office
Mark.Alt@bestbuy.com=20
(w) 612-291-6717
(Cell) 612.803.9085


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Price [mailto:jtpbirder@yahoo.com]=20
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 11:12 AM
To: Jim Williams; MOU-net
Subject: Re: [mou] Comments on MOURC, long


Jim Willaims said -
> They are important, however, in large part because
> something is better than
> nothing. These correspondents also suggest that
> seasonal reporting could be
> improved if observers returned on a regular basis to
> the same locales, so
> bird population fluctuations could be tracked season
> to season and year to
> year. Much of our bird reporting is driven by the happenstance=20
> location of misplaced migrants or the popularity of birding
> hotspots. How much of this
> state goes uncovered simply by neglect?

A couple of points to add to Jim's excellent comments.
 Part of the problem from a scientific point of view
is what can ba called a lack of negative data.=20
Positive data is 'a bird was detected', negative data
is 'a bird was NOT detected'.  This differs from 'no
report' in that you know the species was looked for.=20
So, the BBS/CBC/BBA, etc are all better than seasonal
reports in that you know that observers were looking
to detect all of the species in a defined (small)
area. In a seasonal report you know whaat was detected
but you are less confident about what was NOT detected
because of lack of effort.

Many years ago, in the early days of Birdchat, there
was a discussion of setting up a National Checklist
Project.  For given areas birders would be encouraged
to mark which species they detected and did not detect
in a given area.  The check-list would include a self-determintation of
birding level (primarily to use in assessing the quality of the negative
data) as well as a determination of effort.  It would differ from
Wisconsin's excellent program in that the study areas would be smaller
(although they could be aggregated to the county level).  This differs
from ebird in that it emphasizes where the birds are NOT (negative data)
almost as much as where they are. =20

While not a substitute for formal surveys (playback,
etc) it does go a ways toward filling in some of the
gaps in seasonal records that Jim mentions.



=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Jeff Price
Boulder, CO
jtpbirder@yahoo.com

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