For the first week of class, we were asked to spend some time looking at the Cornell Labs feeder cams and choose one that we are interested in. When counting birds we needed to develop an efficient methodology that is not only about counting individual birds. On the first day we spent about 15 mins and the second day 45 mins.
Matin, Akshita, Dalit and I worked on this week’s assignment together. Each of us use a different parameters to count with, we agreed that the main are: bird size, which feeder the birds ate from, color and crest or no crest. Each of us counted two parameters for example I counted by whether the bird had a crest or not and the bird primary color, Martin counted by bird size and which feeder the birds ate from, Akshita counted by bird primary color and bird size, Dalit counted by which feeder the birds ate from and whether the bird had a crest or no.
The feeder we chose to watch from was located in Ft. Davis, Texas hosted by West Texas Avian Research, Inc, called West Texas Feeders. Some of what we saw:
We used the Merlin Identifier app to identify the type of birds we saw.
I have to admit that I didn't think that I would have this fun watching birds. I watched birds a couple of times in the past in drawing classes but this was a different approach for watching. In the beginning we didn't see many birds but then when more came and even special ones with beautiful patterns it was very exciting. What was really confusing to me is if I already counted the bird or is it a new one, I imagine that the birds migrate in groups and that is why we saw the same types of birds more than once. Going forward, it is something that I am really curious about.
I found a webcam in Israel by the Society For The Protection Of Nature in Israel. I choose to look at nesting Barn Owls and I have to admit it was not easy to see, it was not the best idea to watch this late at night. Along the Owl there was a dead bird and a few mouses that made this nest much more like a Alfred Hitchcock movie. I could tell that the bird was dead and my guess the Owl was eating her (very brutal). I used the open chat on the website to write and inform the people incharge of the nest that something is wrong and in the morning after they were gone.
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