Monday, December 31, 2012

Yardbird Data Compilation Tools

     Several years ago while watching White-Throated Sparrows in my yard I noted the date and realized that it was the earliest spring date that I had ever seen them in my yard.  At the time I thought that in order to know the latest spring date for them and other species, I would have to keep track of every species that I saw everyday in my yard.  My solution was to create an Excel worksheet that I call BIRDLIST. 
    The first sheet of BIRDLIST is a general comment page that list the species, followed by a comment column that usually contains the first date I ever saw the bird in my yard and any other significant sightings.  The last 12 columns represent the months of the year, with the months that the species has been seen in my yard highlighted in yellow.



  Sheet two of BIRDLIST is a narrowed version of the first sheet minus the comment column.  Its purpose is to allow me to fit 150 species on to one sheet printed in landscape format, that I can  fold in thirds and leave in field guide that I use primarily in my yard.  Here is a zoomed in view of sheet2. 



 The third sheet of BIRDLIST is the meat and potatoes, the dog that herds the sheep, the trashcan that catches the puke in the data gathering process. It lists the species, followed by the numbers 1 thru 0 three times followed by a fourth 1.  Any guesses to what these numbers represent?  Answer : the days of the month, the first 1-0 represent the days of the 1st-10th, the second group of numbers represent the days 11th-20th and so on.  The dates were abbreviated due to space restrictions.  I print one out each month and mark with a pen the days that I see each bird. At the end of the month I total all the days I saw each species.

 
 
   Here are 3 photos of the sheet I used in September with explanations of the marks I made on it.


 





 


The data gathered monthly is totaled and entered into another Excel worksheet I call "BIRD SURVEY", that totals the number of days a species is seen for the year and compared to previous years.

NAME J F M A M J J A S O N D 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
1 HOUSE SPARROW 24 26 31 30 21 30 31 26 27 31 30   307 355 364 270 246
2 NORTHERN CARDINAL 24 25 26 29 19 22 25 24 24 24 28   270 282 315 217 209
3 MOURNING DOVE 14 23 29 30 19 22 15 20 26 20 19   237 252 247 196 205
4 EUROPEAN STARLING 21 25 31 30 21 30 29 24 25 29 28   293 295 278 226 223
5 ROCK DOVE 13 14 26 28 21 26 19 16 20 15 27   225 279 280 238 177
6 DOWNY WOODPECKER 1   10 5 8 1 3 9 16 16 20   89 76 57 107 144
7 HOUSE FINCH 5 11 23 30 21 20 8 12 20 11 13   174 138 111 94 143
8 RING BILLED GULL 20 14 29 30 21 28 21 18 22 16 24   243 203 179 164 139
9 AMERICAN CROW 4 10 16 17 10     1 3 2 1   64 71 81 40 32
10 CANADA GOOSE 2 9 11 8 2 1   1 5 3 1   43 39 35 24 16



    If anyone is interested in more info, I can send you my excel files that may make more sense than what is depicted here. You can contact me at markwlo@aol.com.

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