Hi Tom. New birder here trying to understand how sightings are reported. How are these counted? Do the 4312 represent distinct individual wood pigeons manually counted by an individual? In total here this post corresponds to identifying 1 unique and distinct bird every second over the course of 90 mins. This seems almost implausible if relying on the manual counting of a single person. Happy to learn more. Thank you, John
Hi John, all counts involving numbers such as these will be estimates. On this day most flocks I saw were quite small, up to 50 birds, which can be counted individually. Once you have a feel for what a 50-bird flock looks like, you can use that as a guide if a 200 or 300 bird flock passes over. One flock was about 500 birds, but elsewhere that same day, a four-figure flock was reported. These larger flocks really push the overall total up, which accounts for the apparent high birds/minute total. For context, these numbers are small compared to coastal locations, eg Portland saw 33k Woodpigeons on the same day (https://www.portlandbirdobs.com/2026/11/2nd-november.html) All the best, Tom
Hi Tom. New birder here trying to understand how sightings are reported. How are these counted? Do the 4312 represent distinct individual wood pigeons manually counted by an individual? In total here this post corresponds to identifying 1 unique and distinct bird every second over the course of 90 mins. This seems almost implausible if relying on the manual counting of a single person. Happy to learn more. Thank you, John
ReplyDeleteHi John, all counts involving numbers such as these will be estimates. On this day most flocks I saw were quite small, up to 50 birds, which can be counted individually. Once you have a feel for what a 50-bird flock looks like, you can use that as a guide if a 200 or 300 bird flock passes over. One flock was about 500 birds, but elsewhere that same day, a four-figure flock was reported. These larger flocks really push the overall total up, which accounts for the apparent high birds/minute total. For context, these numbers are small compared to coastal locations, eg Portland saw 33k Woodpigeons on the same day (https://www.portlandbirdobs.com/2026/11/2nd-november.html)
ReplyDeleteAll the best, Tom