Clicking on any image will open the full size image in a new window, so you can study the larger size and then return to the quiz – still in progress – in this window.
Thanks to Martin Reid for allowing the use of his photos (and for counting the birds in each one!).
Estimating numbers - flocks in flight
Question 1 |
How many Anhingas? (photo by Martin Reid)
about 300 | |
about 200 | |
about 260 | |
about 400 | |
about 360 |
Question 1 Explanation:
Question 2 |
How many American White Pelicans, including partial birds at the edges? (photo by Martin Reid)
about 80 | |
about 70 | |
about 100 | |
about 90 | |
about 60 |
Question 2 Explanation:
Question 3 |
How many geese? (photo by Martin Reid)
about 320 | |
about 270 | |
about 240 | |
about 400 | |
about 350 |
Question 3 Explanation:
Question 4 |
How many hawks? (photo by Martin Reid)
about 160 | |
about 120 | |
about 100 | |
about 80 | |
about 140 |
Question 4 Explanation:
There are 4 questions to complete.
Wow, all I can say is that nobody should ever listen to me during a Christmas bird count.
Your comment made me laugh outloud, Vanessa! I realize now that the same thing is true for me, too!! :]
Jeez! Same with me!
Me too! I underestimated on every picture, some by as much as 100! I don’t know the method and better read up on it!
It’s so much easier to estimate from a photo than a quickly disappearing flock overhead but practice (and an electronic tally counter) can help.
I have thought about this quiz lately when I am in the woods and a bunch of white-throated sparrows (and others) come chirping through. I have no idea if the bunch extends out of visual and audible range, and I don’t know how many are in the bunch. They are so hard to spy, and they move around so much it is well-nigh impossible to avoid double-counting without being very conservative in the count. So, have any birding studies been run on estimating how badly birders estimate these bunches of LBBs as they move through the understory and brush, particularly during migration? When a small flock seems everywhere around oneself, what percentage of them are likely to counted by a typical birder? (And is the percentage greater than or less than a hundred?)