Final numbers have been tallied for those who submitted expense information (I'm still open to more data though, for those of you who haven't submitted yet).
I was hoping we could break $200,000 for our Minnesota winter travel birding expenses. It was close, thankfully some of the misc. categories were really large. Thanks to Ron Erpelding, John Hockema, Bob Janssen, and Roger Schroeder for including the money they spent on women while birding- that was an additional $10,000...wait, that was just for Hockema. And thanks to Jerry Bonkoski, Al Batt, Phil Chu and Chris Benson for including their $5,000 alcohol purchases while birding... or was that just Benson's part? Have to draw the line somewhere, though, so I did NOT accept the expenses submitted by Craig Mendel for the psychiatrist bills after spending birding time with Conny Brunell and Leslie Marcus. So the final numbers are...............drum roll please................ Responses= approximately 265 Birders represented= approximately 720 (excluding Karla's 500 for her Festival of Owls) Money documented= $226,168.00 Fran Howard and myself are now trying to determine the % of birders who traveled here that we actually heard from and will extrapolate/project our final numbers using that information. Thanks Fran for the help! Randy Frederickson P.S. If I have offended anyone, please contact my sister Sew Soree.
