2016 Hawk Watch Season Is OVER

FALL 2016 Is A Wrap!

FINAL UPDATED TOTALS FOR 2016:

BW 1408 -(1 dark Morph)

BE 35

SS 110

NH 13

AK 21

PG 7  (Falcon Species -1)

OS 14

RS 13

ML 3

CH 13

RT 53 - (1 dark Western? 1 Krider's Red-Tail)

TV 413

BV 38

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TOTAL FALL RAPTORS:  2142 (FINAL)

13 Species

1408 BW, 734 other Raptors

46 days, 272.25 hours

____________

 September  event only:

Tot. Raptors 1529 (1408 BW , 121 other Raptors,) 21 days, 151.75 Hrs.

Post Event:  613 Raptors (Oct/Nov/Dec)

Grand Total of Raptors seen in all the Soddy watch years since 1993:  83,537

(I still have to update the sidebar with the yr end statement and put up the chart on the stats pg etc -
across the blog to bring them current.  It takes some time, forgive please)

In 1993, with exactly 100 hours of viewing time, 1352 Raptors were seen in 26 days.  That first set of data sets a series of parameters for how to analyze the data. 

1.       By kind of bird

2.       By total number of raptors/yr

3.       By number of days

4.       By number of hours

 

But, other kinds of info we keep set new suggestions for how to make comparisons:

5.       By BW vs other  Raptors /ie. by the actual migration time of each raptor

6.       By weather and other local conditions for  each day

 

-But being extremely analytical, I want to carry it a bit further -

7.       By ratios of these things and how they compare to other years strictly as numbers.

8.       By unique individuals seen – or numbers on the increase/decrease

As difficult as this year was, and it was the worst, maybe except for a few very cold windy days of our earlier years, it wasn’t all that bad statistically.  And I want to see exactly how it compared to other years. 

That’s why I like the sharing of the data in this format. Blogging. The charts simply don’t show what we have learned by the mere experience of being at the site for years.  Keeping a story line allows us to voice what we were wondering about, what the time spent would eventually show. I remember the conversations years ago when we pondered many questions, and now we can say confidently some things we learned to be consistently true.  Notice I didn’t say always true.

 It’s nature we are observing, and living things that we are trying to put definitions onto. A saying we heard early on from people like Ken Dubke, an early mentor, was: “Birds have wings and they can fly.”  Great distances, in fact.  So, NO, not always true, just consistently true.  And not only we discovered these answers, other watchers, at other locations, drew similar conclusions, in their experience as well.  In other words, some things we learned can be shared across the watches, up and down the flyway, when “teaching” our visitors about hawk watching.  And when we visit other watches, we seem to know the same things.  Because the Birds taught us.

 Although, if we expand our comparisons to include other sites, a whole new set of parameters for comparisons evolve.

1.       How does elevation of the viewing site effect what you are able to see?

2.       How does the place in the US from which you view hawks effect the activity levels of the migrating raptors?

3.       How do Mountain migrations compare to open flatlands migration?

Beyond this point, the analytics may just become unreasonable.  But all of the above have come up in questions our visitors have asked, and questions we pondered as counters.  Many times, our end of the day conversation, as we packed up and walked off the hill, was full of question marks, after a full day of expectations met or dashed by the day’s statistics.  Bill has expressed several times this year his disappointments, thinking that once the heat of the summer broke, fall raptor counts of hawks other than BW’s would be good.  It left us all shaking our heads.  But I feel that any disappointments might have been withdrawal from the previous years’ totals. So how do we examine that summation?  By comparing the stats over the years.  And that is what I want to do over the next blog or two. 

I think it will be interesting.  I can’t wait to do the investigation.  Stay with us for the results.

And may I please state – IT’S A BLOG.  It’s discussion, and just thinking about stuff.  Never meant to be written in stone fact.  I just share what’s on my/our mind at the time, concerning some part of where my/our curiosity takes us.   And these posts will definitely be just me looking at stuff from the perspective of a curious analytical.  JUST A BLOG!!!!