BBS route backtrack (was numbers game or counting)

Wed May 1 21:59:53 EDT 2002

Hi,

We have opted to do a circle count set out on our route for one very good
reason many of our routes are through habitat where the roadside vegetation
does not represent what is present beyond the verge of the road.  When I am
doing the prairie counts I want to be able to get away from the edge of the
road and out to the hill topping arctics.  When I am doing the Boreal counts
I want to be able to get off into the muskeg and natural meadows.  The
roadsides also tend to often have the bushes removed which can provide
important habitat just a short walk form the car for some species.

A real big problem with the bird surveys is that in many cases particularly
in the routes through our boreal forest they pick up an unrepresentative
number of the edge species which are at the side of the road but not really
representative of the habitat through which we are conducting the survey.
With the birds at least you can hear them from a much further distance from
the road than you can see and identify (or catch) the butterflies in a three
minute stop. We are  able to get more of the birds representative of the
habitat than we would butterflies. What we have opted to do instead is just
to plop down a circle, figure out the various habitats that need covering in
that circle then try to spend some time in each - not perfect by a long shot
but something.

If I ran our 5 BBS/Butterfly counts just along the survey route I would miss
a lot of the butterflies from habitats near the road from which I can hear
the birds but not see the butts.  The Isle Lake route (which is the Darwell
Butterfly count)  would not get any of the bog butterflies which we dig out
on the count circle.  It would be difficult to get some of the Arctics on
our two Prairie Routes and the two Boreal Forest routes would be mainly
surveys of butterflies that make it into the verges - not necessarily
representative of the habitat in the region.

But if your routes are through areas where you can pick up representative
butterflies along the road it sounds great.

Three minutes sounds like an awfully short time.  The stops on a BBS route
are half a mile apart because they are designed to get birds a quarter of a
mile from the car.  Certainly you cannot do that with a 3 minute stop for
the butts.  Maybe you want to take a much longer time at a designated
variety of habits in your circle.  By repeating them each year you might get
much some better data on what is there.  On our BBS/Butterfly count routes
we tend to cover the same areas each year and put in approximately the same
amount of time in each area.

Barb

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Webb [mailto:BruWebb at rcsis.com]
Sent: May 1, 2002 7:19 PM
To: Barb Beck; Michael Gochfeld
Cc: cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca; Lepslist; TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups. com
Subject: BBS route backtrack (was numbers game or counting)

There are several good reasons why a modified Breeding Bird Survey (BBS)
route (used for long-term censuses of birds) might yield some worthwhile
information for butterflies, even if it is done on a once-in-a-season basis.

For those not familiar with the North American Breeding Bird Survey, it is a
standardized driving route with set start and end points.  Birds are
identified by sight and song at each of 50 stops, (0.5 miles apart) and
counted for exactly 3 minutes at each stop.  At each stop the species are
recorded on an easy to use form which has the short list (likely species)
already listed.  A BBS route starts 30 minutes before dawn and usually
finishes about the time butterflies are getting active (something that has
always distracted me in the final stops on my routes.)  These routes are
done under the auspices of  the U.S. Geological Survey and the Canadian
Wildlife Service and the years of data are available online.

This year, immediately after the route is completed, I plan to reverse
direction and count all butterflies I see at each of the 50 stops using BBS
rules. ( If I cannot ID a butterfly, I plan to net it for close-up view, but
the 3-minutes per stop over 50 stops rules will apply.)  Unidentified
species will be recorded, too.  Some fine-tuning will happen along the way,
but I plan to have fun and gather some data.  I might even do it more than
once this season for temporal species differences.  On one of these routes,
I have to reverse direction anyway just to get back.

A line transect like this, with the clock ticking, will be intense but
should have better repeatability than observations in the 15-mile diameter
circle July counts. If anybody has done this before and has suggestions or
sees pitfalls, let me hear from you.  If others BBSers do this, we should
make our data available.  Who knows where this might lead?

Bruce Webb
birder at surewest.net
Distributor for Bird Recorder Software
www.wildlife-computing.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Gochfeld" <gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU>
To: "Barb Beck" <barb at birdnut.obtuse.com>
Cc: <cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca>; "Lepslist" <LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu>;
"TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups. com" <TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 3:58 AM
Subject: [leps-talk] Re: numbers game or counting- Forgot something

I certainly agree that a single count in early summer can't represent a
butterfly fauna in a meaningful way.  In our club I've tried to
encourage people to select a particular place (park, powerline cut, etc,
to census every 2-4 weeks throughout the season.  I do this behind our
house.

But it lacks the party atmosphere of an annual count.  MIKE GOCHFELD

Barb Beck wrote:
>
> Martin pointed out something I left off.
>
> The fact that we have only one butterfly count per summer is a real flaw
in
> the setup.  There should be several to correspond to our various butterfly
> seasons.  Hopefully as we get more people involved we will be able to do
> more than that.  Right now we are just getting snapshots at one time of
the
> year per circle.  In some areas like around Edmonton we have many counts
and
> run some of them early and others late but in the rest of the province we
> just do not have the manpower. We are getting snapshots around the
province
> on a variety of consistent dates since it is not convenient to hold them
on
> the 4th of July Date.  Our routes that are associated with BBS route and
the
> Cold Lake Count which is held in conjunction with a University field trip
> are end of May - early June each year.  These counts must be held then
> because it is the only time the people are in that  area on a consistent
> basis.  Our mountain counts are late and we have a few counts near
Edmonton
> which are held late each year.  In other words we are getting snapshots
> under the current rules of butterflies at various seasons but
unfortunately
> not multiple snapshots per season at one place.
>
> It would be nice if the rules were amended for multiple counts in one
circle
> BUT right now I would just like to see the species we have properly
recorded
> and not have our data lost by the practice of "conservative taxonomy".
>
> Barb Beck
> Edmonton, Alberta

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