Is the GBBC Broken?
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Parents who have little children know that if the kid keeps throwing his food on the floor to get attention, the best thing to do is just ignore it, and not to encourage it by picking up the food over and over.
Here at the GBBC, we'd love to ignore some similar juvenile pranks, so as not to encourage it. But since a few folks use the bad behavior of others to go on birding email lists and question the validity of the GBBC, we have to respond in public.
Every year, some prankster somewhere enters a bogus checklist of outrageous sightings, and folks on local birding email lists think this means the GBBC is broken or worthless. But rest assured, we generally find these problems and though it takes valuable time, our volunteer bird sightings reviewers eventually get to them and delete the bogus reports. So, the GBBC is not broken. We just have a few crackpots out there who think it is funny to make someone waste their time cleaning up after their mess.
xcbxn
Bird reporting
I realize that my counts on the 15th were high for mourning doves and also for redpolls and 1 hoary redpoll however they were the count and not recorded in the count. I still haven't heard from a reviewer. I do have pictures of the hoary which has been in the redpoll flock for a few weeks. I took pictures of some of the trees with the mourning doves to show that that in fact were there. My count today is less at 60+ but I took pictures again today of them. I don't know if it was the ice storm that had the number so high but they were there. The common redpolls are here in numbers this year and it is discouraging to not have them included in the results.
Don't worry
Large numbers of robins and pine siskins
I live in Bennington, Vermont. I reported large numbers of robins (56) and pine siskins (130 and 103). I hope the reviewers don't think I'm a crack pot. These numbers are real. Last year my neighbors reported 84 robins. Come spring, we will have at least 100 of them in our field at once. We have a seep that stays thawed later in the fall, and is the first place to be snow free--like it is right now (even though most of the field is snow-covered).
Is the GBBC Broken?
No ! But there are some people who seem to delight in sending obviously FALSE reports. I ask you to check out a report made from MARTIN, Ga.` I live nearby and made a normal report of what I saw. The report from Martin (a small town in NE GA of about 400 people if you count those on the rural routes)indicated about 133 species (over 50% of the entire GA report)and some bird sightings that must have been quite a task for that person just to locate in a book - much less SEE them in the Martin, GA area. Several never seen or to be seen sea birds and western birds, etc. This report should be pulled and the count corrected. (Birder in Lavonia)
Broken?
I see that several thousand Canada Geese are reported for Piscataway, NJ. There is a little lake in Piscatway. It says that several people reported the count. Is there some way that GBBC corrects for several reports of the same flock of geese?
bird count errors
I noticed that when I printed out my hard copy of my check list it was not what I thought I put in on several birds. I didn't know how to correct the errors and sent an email to the only address I could find: citizenscience@audubon.org with the correct checklist. I don't know if the correction will get to the right people. But it might be helpful to have an eamil address on the GBYBC website for just such problems. I've been participating in the bird count for about 5 years and this is the first time I had this problem.