Monday, May 9, 2011

Finding the Dots!

Scouting is really a two step process. The first is to find the locations of the birds that we will want to see or hear on the big day. We think of this as finding and marking the "dots" on a map. The second step is figure out how to create a route to "connect" the dots.

Now, early in scout week, we are concentrating on finding the dots and not worrying about a potential route. Here in the south we are confirming birds in known locations (Brigantine, The Meadows, Two Mile Island, etc), and on locating birds in locations we rarely, if ever, have gone to (Sea Isle City, Cape Island Preserve, Beaver Dam Road, etc).

Sunday was a full day of scouting starting at 8 am at the Meadows and ended after 11 pm at Stipson Island Road. We probably saw or heard over 120 species for the day while visiting seemingly countless locations. We put lots of dots on our map!

In order to maximize our efforts, Mike and I do not scout together but we did manage to meet up at 10 pm to do a little night scouting in the bayshore marshes.

-Bert Filemyr-

No comments:

Post a Comment