Think of this as an Experiment, doing a large number of seawatches around a large tidal estuary (LIS, 110 miles long), more or less simultaneously. And we dont know exactly how it will turn out.
During this very interesting time of year, when Winter is giving way to Spring, approximately ONE HUNDRED of us birders did-our-thing, contributing as citizen-scientists to the knowledge of Long Island Sound (LIS), while enjoying birds and the great outdoors.
The questions are there, including, what birds are in LIS during this period, and where are they? Exactly what are they eating?? What can we learn from such a large scale seawatch, performed all around the long perimeter of Long Island Sound, in two states? What are the best ways to collect, organize, analyze the data? Can this "snapshot" be a useful tool for comparisons and detecting trends, if done every five or ten years? Will scientists come back and use some of our data in the future? Was this project worthwhile? Did we learn anything?
The answers are not all in, yet, but the questions are clearly interesting. Thank you, thanks to our birding community for conducting this Experiment, thereby contributing to science and to raising the conservation consciousness an extra notch higher.
ps: Anyone is welcome to join and contribute to this project. Just let us know.
This project is being created by many CT & NY birders taking a "snapshot" count at a point in time, of "all" gulls and other birds in Long Island Sound (in CT and NY coastal LIS waters) on 2017 March 25 and April 9, and 2018 March 25. A dozen more blue count icons need to be added to map above to show our full coverage, including a few more points on NY side.
