Gary et al., There is a place where tremendous amounts of data have been complied and are there ready to be analyzed by anyone. Amazing amounts of information can be mined from this single source. www.ebird.org In ebird, you can "View and Explore Data." There are options that will help answer your query. You can look at bar charts of occurrences of bird species in particular regions, states, counties or even single birding spots. This helped me just last week when I wanted to remember the probability of occurrence of the three jaeger species in CO. I knew the order had been worked out, but couldn't find the specific place in my CFO Journals where Tony Leukering had described this. So I hopped on ebird and queried the seasonal occurrences of birds in CO, and it clarified my hazy memory of the order of jaeger occurrences (Long-tailed=Aug/Sept, Pomarine=Sept-Nov, Parasitic =Oct/Nov). Speculation on seasonal distributions of birds has always been a large part of the intrigue of birding for me. But, the knowledge base always came from the advice of other birders or my own records (not always, I mean never, in an organized place ripe for analysis!). There is a HUGE amount of data out there, covering decades of effort from thousands of field observers. Growing up in RI, there was a published list of the birds of RI with bar graphs depicting their seasonal occurrences. This booklet was invaluable, but I have rarely seen anything like it since. The work that went into publishing this little booklet, synthesizing data from the past 100 yrs, must have been tremendous. I think it was the hard work of a few dedicated data-freaks that was the inspiration for ebird. Now instead of waiting for a few ambitious individuals to spend half their lives synthesizing piles of data into a neat and useful presentation that is published once and then never revised, I can just go online and click a few buttons and I will receive pretty much the same information plus some. Of course there are limitations to ebird. It depends on observers entering accurate data. There are still those piles of 100 yr old records that need to be entered if we want to look at long-term trends. I have no doubt that this work will be completed at some point in the future, and for now, we still have an incredibly useful tool for making insights on bird populations, distributions and temporal occurrences. Have fun,
Christian Nunes Boulder, CO [email protected] http://www.flickr.com/photos/christian_nunes/ > Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:52:54 -0700 > Subject: [cobirds] Colorado Migrations > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > Is there historical data/graph out there that shows Colorado migration > periods/species occurrence? For example: > > 10% (early migrants) of Colorado early spring migrants occurs between > Apr-x and May-x dates > 80% (most migrants) of Colorado spring migration occurs between May-x > and May-y dates > 10% (late migrants) of Colorado late spring migrants occurs between > May-x and June-x dates > > Same for Fall migration. > > If we have that data then what species fall in early, most, late > windows? > > Don't want generalizations--be interested in seeing what data shows. > > Thanks > Gary Lefko, Nunn > http://ColoradoBirder.ning.com/ -- Home of the "Nunn Guy" > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Colorado Birds" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
