By Numbers of Birds Seen

I will open this blog with the Stats Bar, showing the data listed by numbers of birds seen, just as we have recorded it from the beginning. 

I am not sure where the format for that info initiated, but, we see it on websites official and non official, used across the board.  Occasionally, there will be slight differences on other charts, based on the hawks they see compared to our own set of hawks seen.  But in general, our chart resembles those of hawk watches along the eastern flyway.
This bar shows our 2016 stats in the "official" order.*

Breaking down and comparing the stats over the years is my new focus for a few posts before closing out the seasons, as I discussed last blog.  I will begin with that chart, which we use every year to post our data.

 The original chart was made by Bill Haley and printed on the flyer we passed out, representing the initial years of the Hawk Watch. That chart now appears at the top of the page on:
STATS FROM THE PAST,  (link also located on the right side bar of the blog.)
The years were from 1993 to 2004.  That chart helps us see how you would like to see the data.  Easy to view, concise and in a specified order. 

To this day, Jimmy hates that I put up the running totals on the side bar without putting them up in the specified order - OS, MK, BE, GE, NH, SS, CH, NG, RS, BW, RT, RL, AK, ML, PG, TV, BV, UIs, Totals, Hours, Days.  The reason they are not in that accepted order, on the side bar, is that the side bar totals indicate the order in which we saw the birds, and first recorded them for the season. It is seldom the same from year to year, but it answers the questions in my mind, what was the first bird of the year?, how soon did we see Bald Eagles?, and were the Accipiters running early this year?.  So, I doggedly refuse to change it. There is literally no other way to get a quick answer to those kinds of questions.  One must go page by page through someone's record book otherwise. For a public record, it needs to be kept in that order, at least for the season.

On the original given day that several new species were seen, I may not have gone through the page to see by minute or hour which species were seen first. So they might be slightly out of order in that regard, but in general, they appear as we saw them progressively through-out the season. And that is due to how they are listed in someone's record book.  Or how the data was given to me.

But for the Charts, I like that there is a standard.

Over several more years after the first chart, no one had made a new chart, so when we began the blog, I wanted to start by catching up the data into a new chart.  At the time, I was just going to make it an ongoing thing to update that chart every year.  Well, computer and software changes made it extremely difficult to just update it, and I never really had the time to rewrite the charts from scratch. Plus I was afraid I would invert numbers or something when rewriting the charts over that much data. Plus, each year, we wanted to add some additional info on the page about the year, so it became a year by year data spread, modeled after the standard set - a single bar of data emerged, like the one above.*

When Jimmy and I retire from monitoring the watch, possibly next year, on our 25  year Anniversary, I hope I am able to make a new chart that will be that one chart that shows all the data at once from 2004 to 2017.  Who knows, maybe I'll get really ambitious and make a chart from the beginning that shows the whole 25 years.  I should start on it now. LOL

The bar can be explained as showing the following:
The year, #s of birds seen in the specified order by name, unidentified species, total raptors seen, hours spent on the watch and days spent there.

Obviously, blank boxes indicate 0 birds seen of that species.  Most of this is explained on the Stats From the Past Pg.  The abbreviations for the birds is also explained there.

These simple numbers are not the entire scope of the data we the guys have kept yearly, but condense the numbers specifically and provide the ground work for our first way to compare the data -

BY THE NUMBERS.

So, now on this page you have all the charts and bars, all the data by the numbers from 1993 through 2016.  Maybe, you would like to take a look and do a few comparisons.

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One of the other things these charts don't show is the ongoing totals, and it occurred to Jimmy a few years ago to add them all up. That is when he discovered that we would cross the 50,000 mark on Broad-wings alone.  Since then we have tried to update the running Grand Totals, and I have just updated them to the 2016 figures on the left top side bar.  That update will remain until the end of next season.

Grand totals are: BW's - 61,816 and all Raptors - 83,537.

My next blog I will have a few new charts.  And we will address how this year compares to other years. 
 'Til next time, when you are doing all those bird counts, don't forget to -

KEEP LOOKING UP!