I should probably be the last to bring up this subject, but having actions matching our convictions would be a worthy goal for anyone’s deeper aspirations, right? And I for one am definitely into that type of “matching.”
Ted Trueblood WMA, North Pond
Photo: Courtesy of Tom McCabe
So, with that cryptic preface, let me launch out boldly to say that I’m sure it’s a given that few of us non-professionals in ornithology have unlimited field time (unless perhaps we may be so fortunate as to also have “bottomless pockets”), most of us picking and choosing our time in the field from an assortment of weekends, mornings, evenings or days off from doing the things that bring in the paychecks and keep our lives, whether family or personal, from falling apart. Where we spend those limited hours of birding does make a difference…at least if considering a larger picture than just enlarging our home county, state and/or life lists.
I know… I can hear some of you already…Yes, I’m the guy who spent an entire year running around Idaho, chasing every possible lead, probably single-handedly pushing up the price of gasoline by my personal use and demand, often idly wishing I could get some kind of frequent flyer/use awards for repetitively traveling I-84 east and US 95 north from Boise. But I’m happy to say that my family, budget, and ethics all survived that year’s peripatetic quest, which by December left me wondering what mental magical euphoria the ability to truthfully and proudly state that I had seen “318 different Idaho bird species, recognized, accepted, and greater in number than any other birder before me in this state during one calendar year” was all about. In retrospect I’ve come to the conclusion that although it was a definite challenge and personal achievement stretch, I’ve boldly and indelibly etched on the tablets of my psyche “Never again!”
Yes, you’ve probably already guessed it. This is going to be an impassioned, but hopefully most logical, appeal to not be a bird chaser, but rather a bird finder…and then not just to anywhere your fancy may strike you on a given day or weekend, but at a specific, regularly checked, carefully tabulated, explored, and consciously selected locality or route that you stick by for not just a few weeks or months, but perhaps even years, season in and season out…a LICS or Locality Intensive Coverage Survey.
Everyone wants to be in that place “where the birds can be found”…as many and of as great a variety as possible. No one wants to spend their precious, limited time looking at little of number or consequence. If I’m going to put off mowing, cleaning, fixing, and shopping (to name just a few, often family assisted, glaring needs that have a way of “intruding” on free time), then I want to make sure I’m not wasting my energy on a potentially bird-less landscape, right? Why not go to where someone else has already assured me of a good shot at numbers, variety, and even possible rarities?
Before I answer my own rhetorical questions… (definitely beware of people who talk to themselves!), let me tell you that I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like life just handed to him by someone else’s actions. I actually enjoy the hard work and effort necessary to accomplish. I get a rush out of seeing it happen because I myself make it happen. For me “passivity” and “conformity” are in the same category as malignant cancers, the N.Y. Yankees, big oil companies, Soap Operas, and Country Music… I know that I can’t escape them and can’t outrun their relentless resiliency and pervasive power, but in no way or form do I want to succumb to their ever encroaching evil either, and be branded by them. (I figure that I’ve lost about one-half of you with that last sentence, but…I believe honesty is still a virtue.)
Let me put it this way, especially for all you hardcore listers. By doing the hard work of selecting an area to regularly and carefully census, recurrently and conscientiously following through on surveying that area, and then keeping permanent records over the course of many seasons, records which in some way can be shared with others about observable changes in avian populations, you and I can potentially be adding an important piece to a larger puzzle of occurrence, distribution, dispersal, population, and habitat adaptation of various species, to say nothing of chronicling potential changes in the land itself and its environmental suitability for birdlife.
I know, the Breeding Bird Census, Christmas Bird Count, Great Backyard Bird Count, and various other lesser known and appreciated “counts” having been doing this very thing for years… but they are all one time, seasonal, “give me your best now and then move on to something else” at best.
Let me share my personal example. As of this writing there are few active birders in the Mountain Home, Elmore County area. After Stacy Peterson left for Alaska, there were few that ventured down to Ted Trueblood Wildlife Management Area and the area around C.J. Strike Reservoir on a regular basis. Yet the area always seemed to have “good birds” when checked by birders passing through or deciding to give it a seasonal shot for a day or so. The Bruneau Christmas Bird Count attests to the possibilities of at least a portion of the area. Ted Trueblood WMA is but 52 miles from my front door, and I can make a round trip, after continuing on through Grand View to the Strike Dam, finally stopping at access points along the south shore of C.J. Strike before returning home, totaling approximately 150 miles (at $3 or so per gallon, that’s about $18 to $20 per week). While I may not be able to “run my route” on the same day of the week, 52 weeks per year, I have decided to come as close as possible to that precision regularity as schedules, family, finances, and the serendipitous nature of life will allow.
Initially I will be able to compare my sighting results to other more irregular visits I’ve made in years past (and perhaps the visits of other birders also). But the fun really starts when comparison can be made going into a second or subsequent year, looking at species numbers, arrival and departure dates, dispersal patterns, breeding and over-wintering records, etc.
Here’s my challenge to you: find a place, any place, that you can “make your own.” Set out your own schedule of coverage. Maybe it can be more than once a week, perhaps in some cases even close to daily. It might even be your own backyard! Or it could be that you can only cover your area every other week, or every ten days… it’s your project. You can set the parameters and boundaries of coverage.
Here are the things that are important for you to do to make this a potentially valuable part Idaho’s permanent record of birdlife (or wherever you may live):
Choose the coverage area
Set out a schedule of coverage, keeping as close to set reporting times and dates as possible
Keep careful record of not only species seen, but numbers of each species, first and last dates seen during any season, major movements of species into the area, etc.
Note weather and viewing conditions on each day
Make note of any divergences you make from the preset observation patterns, for instance, any places you may have skipped or added on a given day.
Take down descriptions of any unusual or rare birds seen. (“Rarity” can be a very relative term, because what is rare for your viewing territory might be “common” elsewhere, or visa versa. You are the expert on the birds of your area; you have the records; you are the one who knows what birds are worthy of note.)
Regularly share your findings on a forum such a IBLE (or the bird message board of your choice for the area in which you live)
What will doing these LICS (Locality Intensive Coverage Surveys) accomplish? What’s in it all for you?
The personal satisfaction of discovery and adding to the collective knowledge of the birdlife of an area, if not also a state
Becoming THE EXPERT on the birdlife of your chosen area. No one will know more about the birds of your area than you know about them.
Refining and fine-tuning your identification, observation, and recording skills in a way that few birding exercises can accomplish
Some of you have been participating in LICS before I gave it a name and made it a potentially new birding acronym. Whether in your backyard, local park, nearby reservoir, National Wildlife Refuge, or ?...this is nothing new to you. People like Darrell Marks at Dry Lakes, Canyon County, or Cliff and Lisa Weisse in Island Park, or many others have been setting the standard (my apologies to those that I did not mention by name).
But my challenge to the rest of you is to also take up this golden opportunity. Idaho is yet “young” when it comes to what we actually know about its birdlife compared to neighbors such as Oregon and Washington, or even Utah and Nevada. I would love to see what some of you come up with. If you need suggestions or assistance in getting started with you personal LICS, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to give you some suggestions.
LICS for Idaho…and the West!
I know… I can hear some of you already…Yes, I’m the guy who spent an entire year running around Idaho, chasing every possible lead, probably single-handedly pushing up the price of gasoline by my personal use and demand, often idly wishing I could get some kind of frequent flyer/use awards for repetitively traveling I-84 east and US 95 north from Boise. But I’m happy to say that my family, budget, and ethics all survived that year’s peripatetic quest, which by December left me wondering what mental magical euphoria the ability to truthfully and proudly state that I had seen “318 different Idaho bird species, recognized, accepted, and greater in number than any other birder before me in this state during one calendar year” was all about. In retrospect I’ve come to the conclusion that although it was a definite challenge and personal achievement stretch, I’ve boldly and indelibly etched on the tablets of my psyche “Never again!”
Yes, you’ve probably already guessed it. This is going to be an impassioned, but hopefully most logical, appeal to not be a bird chaser, but rather a bird finder…and then not just to anywhere your fancy may strike you on a given day or weekend, but at a specific, regularly checked, carefully tabulated, explored, and consciously selected locality or route that you stick by for not just a few weeks or months, but perhaps even years, season in and season out…a LICS or Locality Intensive Coverage Survey.
Everyone wants to be in that place “where the birds can be found”…as many and of as great a variety as possible. No one wants to spend their precious, limited time looking at little of number or consequence. If I’m going to put off mowing, cleaning, fixing, and shopping (to name just a few, often family assisted, glaring needs that have a way of “intruding” on free time), then I want to make sure I’m not wasting my energy on a potentially bird-less landscape, right? Why not go to where someone else has already assured me of a good shot at numbers, variety, and even possible rarities?
Before I answer my own rhetorical questions… (definitely beware of people who talk to themselves!), let me tell you that I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like life just handed to him by someone else’s actions. I actually enjoy the hard work and effort necessary to accomplish. I get a rush out of seeing it happen because I myself make it happen. For me “passivity” and “conformity” are in the same category as malignant cancers, the N.Y. Yankees, big oil companies, Soap Operas, and Country Music… I know that I can’t escape them and can’t outrun their relentless resiliency and pervasive power, but in no way or form do I want to succumb to their ever encroaching evil either, and be branded by them. (I figure that I’ve lost about one-half of you with that last sentence, but…I believe honesty is still a virtue.)
Let me put it this way, especially for all you hardcore listers. By doing the hard work of selecting an area to regularly and carefully census, recurrently and conscientiously following through on surveying that area, and then keeping permanent records over the course of many seasons, records which in some way can be shared with others about observable changes in avian populations, you and I can potentially be adding an important piece to a larger puzzle of occurrence, distribution, dispersal, population, and habitat adaptation of various species, to say nothing of chronicling potential changes in the land itself and its environmental suitability for birdlife.
I know, the Breeding Bird Census, Christmas Bird Count, Great Backyard Bird Count, and various other lesser known and appreciated “counts” having been doing this very thing for years… but they are all one time, seasonal, “give me your best now and then move on to something else” at best.
Let me share my personal example. As of this writing there are few active birders in the Mountain Home, Elmore County area. After Stacy Peterson left for Alaska, there were few that ventured down to Ted Trueblood Wildlife Management Area and the area around C.J. Strike Reservoir on a regular basis. Yet the area always seemed to have “good birds” when checked by birders passing through or deciding to give it a seasonal shot for a day or so. The Bruneau Christmas Bird Count attests to the possibilities of at least a portion of the area. Ted Trueblood WMA is but 52 miles from my front door, and I can make a round trip, after continuing on through Grand View to the Strike Dam, finally stopping at access points along the south shore of C.J. Strike before returning home, totaling approximately 150 miles (at $3 or so per gallon, that’s about $18 to $20 per week). While I may not be able to “run my route” on the same day of the week, 52 weeks per year, I have decided to come as close as possible to that precision regularity as schedules, family, finances, and the serendipitous nature of life will allow.
Initially I will be able to compare my sighting results to other more irregular visits I’ve made in years past (and perhaps the visits of other birders also). But the fun really starts when comparison can be made going into a second or subsequent year, looking at species numbers, arrival and departure dates, dispersal patterns, breeding and over-wintering records, etc.
Here’s my challenge to you: find a place, any place, that you can “make your own.” Set out your own schedule of coverage. Maybe it can be more than once a week, perhaps in some cases even close to daily. It might even be your own backyard! Or it could be that you can only cover your area every other week, or every ten days… it’s your project. You can set the parameters and boundaries of coverage.
Here are the things that are important for you to do to make this a potentially valuable part Idaho’s permanent record of birdlife (or wherever you may live):
Choose the coverage area
Set out a schedule of coverage, keeping as close to set reporting times and dates as possible
Keep careful record of not only species seen, but numbers of each species, first and last dates seen during any season, major movements of species into the area, etc.
Note weather and viewing conditions on each day
Make note of any divergences you make from the preset observation patterns, for instance, any places you may have skipped or added on a given day.
Take down descriptions of any unusual or rare birds seen. (“Rarity” can be a very relative term, because what is rare for your viewing territory might be “common” elsewhere, or visa versa. You are the expert on the birds of your area; you have the records; you are the one who knows what birds are worthy of note.)
Regularly share your findings on a forum such a IBLE (or the bird message board of your choice for the area in which you live)
What will doing these LICS (Locality Intensive Coverage Surveys) accomplish? What’s in it all for you?
The personal satisfaction of discovery and adding to the collective knowledge of the birdlife of an area, if not also a state
Becoming THE EXPERT on the birdlife of your chosen area. No one will know more about the birds of your area than you know about them.
Refining and fine-tuning your identification, observation, and recording skills in a way that few birding exercises can accomplish
Some of you have been participating in LICS before I gave it a name and made it a potentially new birding acronym. Whether in your backyard, local park, nearby reservoir, National Wildlife Refuge, or ?...this is nothing new to you. People like Darrell Marks at Dry Lakes, Canyon County, or Cliff and Lisa Weisse in Island Park, or many others have been setting the standard (my apologies to those that I did not mention by name).
But my challenge to the rest of you is to also take up this golden opportunity. Idaho is yet “young” when it comes to what we actually know about its birdlife compared to neighbors such as Oregon and Washington, or even Utah and Nevada. I would love to see what some of you come up with. If you need suggestions or assistance in getting started with you personal LICS, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to give you some suggestions.
LICS for Idaho…and the West!
2 comments:
Great suggestions Mr. Krueger and I like the LICS acronym.
Due to family (wife and four young kids) and financial limits (two jobs, poor housing market) my birding has mostly become limited to my lunch-time explorations along the Boise River in the Eagle area. Although I still very much enjoy the thrill of listing a new bird, I am becoming more and more fascinated with my LICS area of Merrill Park on the east of Eagle Rd as well as the river on the west side of Eagle Rd.
I have been documenting all my sightings in eBird, and for this Eagle LICS, it has been exactly one year that I started my observations. It will be neat to see what changes and/or lack of change that I find this year. I am discovering specific nests that I look forward to observing thru the spring.
I expect to have this office location for another two or three years, at which point I will adopt locations on the Avimor site as my new LICS.
If anyone is in the Eagle area at lunch time, please don't hesitate to give me a call and join the walk.
Harry, I would add that regularly entering the bird surveys into a widely available database, such as www.ebird.com, would be very beneficial to all. The benefit over just a discussion board like IBLE is that it can be directly used by scientists and can be easily searched and analyzed years from now.
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