Locations

As I sit here writing this blog entry the World Series of Birding (WSB) is
only 15 days away!

I took some time this morning to go over notes from past events to help plan
on how to use the next 15 days efficiently. As the route has evolved over
the years our team now scouts only two major areas. We no longer scout or go
to birding locations in the central part of the state (Florence, Riverwinds,
Mannington, etc.) as we have come to concentrate on just the northern and
the southern parts of New Jersey. Paul Guris and Zack Baer scout the
northern part of our route. Mike Fritz and myself south the southern part of
our route.

I made of quick list of the major locations Mike and I need to check in
Cumberland, Atlantic and Cape May Counties as serious scouting begins. The
list has 57 locations. Many of these are major locations, such as
Heislerville, Brigantine and the Cape May Meadows, which contain multiple
specific smaller locations to check. And many of these 57 locations will be
checked several times in the course of scouting. As migration occurs and
teams share scouting information many more locations will be added to our
lists. There is no way we can get to all possible locations on the WSB but
all possible locations need to be checked during scouting and species noted.
Then it is the matter of going over what is where, and figuring out how to
go to the least number of locations and still record the maximum number of
species.

Scouting involves checking as many locations as possible. The actual WSB
involves trying to figure out how few locations we need to go to!

-Bert Filemyr-