The discussion today reminds me of a similar train of thought that I've been pondering lately. Namely, in today's world of birding and ornithology, we require a high of degree of certainty when it comes to documenting the classification of our observations to the species level. Basically, photographic proof has become almost essential for rare species. When it comes to night flight calls, the certitude of species identification becomes very problematic. I am concerned that we might apply similar standards to NFC identification as to bird observations. Should we rather think of NFC IDs more in terms of probabilities and error bars than certitude? I personally feel this approach is worth pursuing if we wish to make more of a contribution to bird migration and aeroecology. For example, where I in live in Nova Scotia, the "zeep" warblers can be boiled down to about 6 species that are difficult to identify. Thus while I might not be able to distinguish the NFC of a Yellow Warbler from a Blackpoll Warbler, it is very probable that this type of call in early August is a Yellow Warbler and such a call in early September is a Blackpoll Warbler. This breakdown of all the zeep warblers into probability categories is much more useful, I believe, for understanding regional migration patterns than having them all lumped as zeep warblers because we can't be certain of their identification to the species level. How we calculate these probabilities is another question. I have been doing stop-over transects in areas close to a recording station. Although this analysis is not completed, I sense that there may be some interesting correlations to be made between the species composition of nocturnal migration and stop-over areas within a certain time frame.
-- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
