Stewardship Garden

More citizen science results

• Project Budburst results
• Monarch citizen science results
• FrogWatch USA results
• Project FeederWatch results
• Great Backyard Bird Count results
• CNY results
• House Finch Disease Survey results
• Summary of all bird results

Central New York Bird Count Results

Our Sunday newspaper carries a weekly bird column. Until recently, the author of this column, Dr. Benjamin Burtt, coordinated the results of people's observations of birds in their backyards, even before Cornell University's Ornithology Lab started Project Feederwatch. The "rules" were similar to Project Feederwatch, except that people observed birds for an entire week - the first week of each month from October to April.

The important rule was that you counted only the maximum number of birds of a given species that you see at any one time. Thus the results guarantee that each figure represents at least as many birds as actually visited your yard. This rule is necessary, but most frustrating when you see a female cardinal and later see a male cardinal. Even though you know two birds visited your yard, you can only record "1" since you didn't see them both at the same time. This rule is understandable when you realize allowing people to record "2" in this circumstance would over-represent species where gender is obvious relative to species such as chickadees where gender is not.

Note that these are conservative figures. They represent only birds that I saw during one week each month ... and only during the time I was home looking for them.

NOTE: The first number in the following table refers to my observations for the '00-'01 season; the second number the '01-'02 season, the third number the '02-'03 season and so on. A dash represents no birds seen during the observation period in any year (although I have seen them in my yard at other times), and an "x" means I wasn't available to make observations.

 

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