Prior to the indoor event our IBA staff set up the
outdoor training sights. |
Dan setting up the distance test. |
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WCAS President, Tom Romito, gave the opening introduction to our April 2
IBA training session,
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followed by a
power-point presentation by Dan Petit, Head of Natural Resources for the
Cleveland Metroparks. Dan stated that our main goal is: “To accurately
document the status of breeding bird populations in forested habitats in
the Rocky River Valley, as well as the environmental and land-use
practices that may affect those populations….” In order to do this we
need trained volunteers to monitor randomly selected points in a
prescribed manner to generate credible, scientific data. |
First our dedicated
volunteers went through an indoor bird identification testing and
training session. Not too happy about being “tested”, they all
never-the-less survived and had a few laughs along the way. |
After being
fortified with a delicious buffet, they tramped outside to do some real
“hands-on” field training. Six stations were set up outside the Rocky
River Nature Center for this purpose. |
Terri Martincic and
Kit Birch put people through their paces learning how many steps they
needed to reach both 25 and 50 meter targets in the woods at Station 1 |
At Station 2, Tom
Romito and Don Howell got to show off the new Garmen GPS 60 instruments
for use in finding the point count locations. |
Dan Petit explained
how to record bird data on a special survey form at Station 3 |
At Station 4, Nancy Howell had the fun job of leading a bird
identification “look and listen” time. |
Bill Deininger
helped each group learn how to estimate distances from a certain point
to flags placed at 25 and 50+ meter distances at Station 5. |
At Station 6, Liz
Clingman, Rich Kassouf, Pat Poole and Dean Murad tested participants on
their distance estimation skills with 20 flags placed at various
locations 25 to more than 50 meters away. |
Acting as guides and
coordinators for all this were Mary Anne Romito, Laurie Boylan and
Claudia Anders. |
Last, but not least,
Dave Lewis valiantly hauled his heavy equipment all over the place to
take awesome pictures documenting our event. |
WCAS thanks all the
great volunteer monitors who came to this first training event. Those
who are not ready to be observers now can be recorders and learn in the
field as part of a team. They can eventually become point counters
themselves, which will give us an ever widening pool of talent so we can
monitor more and more points. Good job! |
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|
 Click
on Flyer Picture to see entire brochure. |
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