woodcreeper

Here is where I’ll post questions asked by people interested in the moonwatching event(s). Hopefully this will provide the most accessible means for disseminating the answers to such questions. Please feel free to email your question or answer to moonwatch@woodcreeper.com. As questions arise, I will post them even without an answer. As answers come in, I will post these as well.

Q. What do you plan to do with these data that you collect?

A. Our initial idea was that we would revisit the paper by George Lowery and Robert Newman, originally published in The Auk in 1966. You can access a copy of the paper at the following URL : http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v083n04/p0547-p0586.pdf . In that paper the authors analyzed national moonwatching data which they compiled from over 1300 volunteers, collected over six nights, in October of 1955. The mobilization of so many volunteers is impressive even by today’s standards, especially when one considers the lack of electronic communication! The results of the analysis described some general trends of migration across the country, many of which are taken for granted today (such as weaker migration events in the mountainous West, Trans-Gulf migration, and heavy and directional migration events in the East).

So why revisit this study? Well, first of all, we felt that today we would have a much larger pool of volunteers such that we could carry out the study at a much higher resolution (more people = more moonwatching stations = better spatial coverage). Since birdwatching has grown as a hobby over the last 50 years, there are more people afield with quality optics and the know-how to conduct a moonwatch. From a quantitative end, there is way more remotely-sensed data available for our use in trying to explain any patters we might find in the data. Weather data is available at much higher resolution, and radar data can be linked directly to moonwatching events in an effort to quantify bird density. With the increase in remote collection of nocturnal flight call data, we can not only make inference about density of migration, but we can also begin to understand which species are deciding to migrate, and when. Taken together, these various layers will begin to tell a much more colorful story about nocturnal migration over the US.

Q. Are some nocturnal migrants small enough and high enough (on certain nights) that you would miss seeing them pass in front of moon even with a scope?

A.

Q. My eye gets “harshed out” a bit from moonwatching through a scope. Does anyone use a camera filter of some type when moonwatching for long periods of time?

A.