On Tuesday, we held our third annual volunteer appreciation event. Unlike previous years, we were unable to gather at Hammonasset and watch harriers hunting over the marsh as we provided updates, and instead met on Zoom. This forum, however, did allow us to show more of the preliminary results and provide more guidance on how to use the web site. We were not able to record the event, but you can review the presentation sides here and we plan to post the highlights, with some additional explanation, here on the blog over the forthcoming days.
As Friday’s weather forecast suggests, the winter has finally arrived, and the third winter field season for the Connecticut Bird Atlas begins this weekend. Winter data collection runs from 1st November until the end of February, so it is time to brush up on the winter protocols and start planning the next bout of data collection. As with the breeding atlas, we have opted to add a fourth field season for the winter atlas, to accommodate any constraints people face as a result of the ongoing pandemic. We are still hoping, however, that we will be able to make a lot of progress this winter, to match the superb advances that the summer produced.
If you’re new to the winter atlas, or just want a quick refresher on how to approach surveys in your block, here’s a blog post from 2018, that describes a good strategy for making the most of the time you spend in the field.