Hima Hammana Bird counting: Birdlife partners from three countries are helping students to become a skilled birdwatchers
Hima Hammana Bird counting: Birdlife partners from three countries are helping students to become a skilled birdwatchers
Bird counting has begun today in Hima Hammana with the Swiss and Swedish birders.
Students from Ras el Maten visited the site and participated in this charming activity. They learned about this amazing phenomenon happening on the Lebanese skies every autumn!
everyone can learn to count and identify flying eagles, buzzards, kites, storks and other birds.
Join and listen to bird migration experts…
This week ( 17th to 23rd October) is official Bird Counting Week. Who knew?? This is your chance to help record the number of birds in Lane Cove. Anyone can be involved. Guess what – there is an app for it (of course)!!
Just get comfy in your favourite outdoor space, make sure your eyes are peeled and record what you see for 20 minutes. Why not make it a family affair? You can count as many…
What comes to mind when thinking of protecting fish wildlife and habitat? Well, it probably isn’t computer screens, laptops, spreadsheets, old photographs, data entry and analytics programs. Ahh, but it is. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wouldn’t be able to do our job of protecting our trust resources and fulfilling our mission without the onerous task of managing the seemingly endless amounts of scientific data.
(Image of Yaquina Head and a colony of
The Service’s Pacific Regional Director recently recognized three Service Staff members for their outstanding work in data management and the direct correlation to our Fish and Wildlife Service mission. Shawn Stephensen of the Oregon Coast NWR Complex; Sue Thomas of the Washington Maritime NWR Complex and Roberta Swift of the Regional Migratory Birds Program are recipients of the first Pacific Region Data Management Award for their outstanding work and contributions in the development of the "Analysis of Long-Term Seabird Colony Legacy Data in the Pacific Northwest as a Regional Baseline."
(Shawn Stephensen of the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex)
That sounds like a really boring project but these dedicated seabird biologists not only spend countless hours behind a computer screen analyzing numbers and data but brave the weather, the insects, and the landscape to bravely contribute their piece to science. Bet you didn’t know that science can be very dangerous work. Service biologists put their lives on the line year after year, flying around in helicopters, riding in boats on the sea, leaning out the windows taking photographs and keeping that pen and notebook handy, making this critical data collection effort seem effortless.
“Often, our field work takes a few days to complete and is the most enjoyable part of the job, but data management is arguably the most important and takes the lion's share of the project time to complete.” Says Sue Thomas, “Its encouraging to see that the Service’s Pacific Region Management Team is behind us on this monumental effort - especially after you’ve counted birds on a screen for so long that you can't see straight!”
(Sue Thomas of the Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex shares an adventure with an Oyster Catcher)
Service wildlife biologists of the last century (okay, so that was just 16 years ago) collected data in much the same way we do today, counting birds, taking photos, writing the data down and then saving it in some electronic data sharing format. But just how many versions of electronic data collection software and hardware have been in use since Teddy Roosevelt set aside coastal habitat for seabirds in the form of National Wildlife Refuges in 1907?
(Just one of the many images analyzed is this photo of Yaquina Head and a colony of common murres - look closely you many see a few Brandt's cormorants in there)
Technology has changed at such a rapid pace that scientific data recording methods once thought a breakthrough, have now become antiquated. However the data (the numbers, the species, the dates and locations) still provide essential information about the past and help us manage fish and wildlife resources into the future. This particular project involves scanning, archiving and analyzing many years of valuable aerial photographic seabird survey data for murres, gulls, and three species of cormorants (double-crested, Brandts' and pelagics).
(The images above taken at Colony Rock at Yaquina Head, depict the largest murre colony on the west coast. To analyze this data, biologists edit the photo using little computer generated dots to identify and count each individual bird. Just imagine, there were over 30,000 birds in this photo! )
Over the years, slides can deteriorate, and paper files can be lost or destroyed so it is essential that we establish proper data management practices by synthesizing seabird colony data collected within the Oregon Coast and Washington Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complexes. Given the risk of data loss, managing and archiving seabird colony data in a stable digital format is a priority. The project entails cataloging, scanning, archiving, and analyzing legacy images of seabird colonies on the coast, as far back as 1972. back as 1972.
"It's been a true pleasure working with Oregon Coast and Washington Maritime NWRC to help complete a project that they have already been working toward for years!” said Roberta Swift, “I think we will all breathe a sigh of relief when the last slide has been scanned and protected from the effects of time. "
In recognition of this monumental task, the Service’s Pacific Region would like to congratulate Shawn, Sue and Roberta for their excellent work and also acknowledge the other team members that made this project a success: Kudos to Erin Stockenberg of the Service and Dave Perekstra from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Excellent Work Guys!
Written by: Jane Chorazy, USFWS Pacific Region PAO
