First Nice Numbers of BW's

Sept 25, 25, Thursday. We are not posting the report just yet, until Bill gets a chance to take a look and clarify the Sharpies count. But I am going to post about it, because it is a great example of how we do double cks through out the count season, so that we can offer the numbers that can be compared at the end of the season and feel good about it. Bill is primarily the counter these days. So what he reports is what we put up as the count. (This may include numbers from other trusted counters.) But a typo, or a missed transfer from his handwritten records, to an email could make the end count be different. Even in the end, he has sometimes put up his totals from his book, page totals as his count. But as for the reported count, official to the Hawk Migration Association, it will match his emails. Jimmy is able to go back and alter if Bill can ID the difference of one or 2 birds over a season, but it's much too difficult to do. So we try to catch errors day by day. Today, the body of the hourlies say one thing for Sharpies and the Total line says another number. So before entering that into all these posts and Hawkcount.org, we will ask Bill what numbers he wishes to report. If we just make a correction, it might be wrong, and in this case, if he missed the sharpie in the hourlies, it definitely would be. Each month, I compare my running numbers to the hawkcount numbers to make sure Jimmy and I are on the same page. Only once have I found him wrong in all these years. But I have researched my numbers several times and corrected. Keeping a running total up to date is a little more difficult, especiallydoing it by hand in a journal. Hawkcount is in Excel. I don't use Excel, since I would never find my errors because I am not fluent in Excel. The running count is not as important daily on the blog, but needs to match up for me several times a month to keep our yearlies correct. It is easy to verify against Hawkcount's Excel running totals. More BWs were seen yesterday against the clouds and today's weather looks like there might be nice conditions too. Hoping Bill has a great day. Keep Looking UP!!!