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Last Friday we invited our participants to a short meeting here at the MRGP office. We wanted to cover a few things:
Participant Experiences
Preliminary Data
Participant Feedback and Suggestions for Improvement
We gave a short powerpoint talk on our progress thus far. Click here to download it (you will need the site login info).
Below are a few points that were discussed at the meeting:
survey useful? Do you enjoy being part of the project? In particular, we would like to increase the number of people
survey (often for every species) but then did not do any more. To some extent this is to be expected in a volunteer-based
survey (often for every species) but then did not do any more. To some extent this is to be expected in a volunteer-based
project, but we would like to improve. We welcome suggestions as to how we might increase the rate of complete
surveys (at least 3 for each species) or how to recruit more observers.
If you had to stop surveying for whatever reason, please start up again. If you had to miss a few months or weeks,
you can start right up again. Our original plan was to have 6 surveys per species from each household from June to
November. If you are behind don't worry; just 3 or 4 surveys still helps. Less than 3 are of very limited use...only 1
survey at a particular spot is not very helpful to us. So even if you are behind don't worry, even if you only get us 2 more
surveys that will be a huge help.
Focus on screech owls, then barred, then great-horned. If you face the choice of completing all of your screech owl
surveys vs. putting time into other species, we would recommend you go for thoroughness in your screech owl effort.
happens. Barred and GHO data is more sparse and while we expect to get enough data for barred at least, it is better to
have 1 great dataset than 2 pretty-good ones.
Feel free to recruit! This project requires as much data as possible. If your friends or family might be interested
please direct them to our website and/or have them get in touch with us. If you are a teacher, Scout leader, etc., this
study might be a great science project for your group.
We are going to stop the surveys through the winter. The winter is the hardest time for these birds, and we would
like to have some time to allow the owls to "un-habituate" from our surveys. Therefore, please don't do any surveys after
November 1.
We will start up again sometime in the Spring (likely around April). We will contact all of our members to let them
know to start up again. We'll most likely offer additional training/discussion meeting in the spring. We're looking to
continue the project through the summer of 2010. Please feel free to keep in contact with us through the winter; we plan
on keeping everyone informed through our winter data digging.
Don't get discouraged. If you are not hearing owls, please don't give up. First, the "no's" are just as important as the
"yes's", from a data standpoint. Also, there are many folks who did not find an owl on the first, second, or even third try,
but then got one on the fourth. So don't give up, these guys can be hard to find, and figuring out how much effort it takes
to locate an owl is one of our central questions.
Thank you!
Participant Experiences
Preliminary Data
Participant Feedback and Suggestions for Improvement
We gave a short powerpoint talk on our progress thus far. Click here to download it (you will need the site login info).
Below are a few points that were discussed at the meeting:
survey useful? Do you enjoy being part of the project? In particular, we would like to increase the number of people
survey (often for every species) but then did not do any more. To some extent this is to be expected in a volunteer-based
survey (often for every species) but then did not do any more. To some extent this is to be expected in a volunteer-based
project, but we would like to improve. We welcome suggestions as to how we might increase the rate of complete
surveys (at least 3 for each species) or how to recruit more observers.
If you had to stop surveying for whatever reason, please start up again. If you had to miss a few months or weeks,
you can start right up again. Our original plan was to have 6 surveys per species from each household from June to
November. If you are behind don't worry; just 3 or 4 surveys still helps. Less than 3 are of very limited use...only 1
survey at a particular spot is not very helpful to us. So even if you are behind don't worry, even if you only get us 2 more
surveys that will be a huge help.
Focus on screech owls, then barred, then great-horned. If you face the choice of completing all of your screech owl
surveys vs. putting time into other species, we would recommend you go for thoroughness in your screech owl effort.
happens. Barred and GHO data is more sparse and while we expect to get enough data for barred at least, it is better to
have 1 great dataset than 2 pretty-good ones.
Feel free to recruit! This project requires as much data as possible. If your friends or family might be interested
please direct them to our website and/or have them get in touch with us. If you are a teacher, Scout leader, etc., this
study might be a great science project for your group.
We are going to stop the surveys through the winter. The winter is the hardest time for these birds, and we would
like to have some time to allow the owls to "un-habituate" from our surveys. Therefore, please don't do any surveys after
November 1.
We will start up again sometime in the Spring (likely around April). We will contact all of our members to let them
know to start up again. We'll most likely offer additional training/discussion meeting in the spring. We're looking to
continue the project through the summer of 2010. Please feel free to keep in contact with us through the winter; we plan
on keeping everyone informed through our winter data digging.
Don't get discouraged. If you are not hearing owls, please don't give up. First, the "no's" are just as important as the
"yes's", from a data standpoint. Also, there are many folks who did not find an owl on the first, second, or even third try,
but then got one on the fourth. So don't give up, these guys can be hard to find, and figuring out how much effort it takes
to locate an owl is one of our central questions.
Thank you!