A week ago a birding friend of mine took me along with him to do a Breeding Bird Survey Route. The point of the survey is to find out how many birds are around in a certain area during the breeding season. We got up before the sun and got started right as the birds woke up. The survey consists of stopping at 50 stops along a 25 mile route and looking and listening for birds for three minutes at each stop and then recording what birds there are and how many of each there are. The morning was going great and we saw some neat birds like Blue Grosbeak and Western Kingbird but then it took a turn for the worst at stop 19.We were standing on a bridge surveying birds from there. My friend decided to put the paperwork which was attached to a clipboard on the railing. He decided to move it to a safer spot since it was a little windy and he didn't want them to go into the river. In the process of trying to move the papers somehow they ended up falling out of his hands and into the river! We acted quickly to save the papers but it was to no avail. I did manage to catch a few with a stick but the rest just floated down the river. When I got back we noticed that the papers I did snag had nothing recorded on them yet!
Although we were discouraged and in total disbelief we moved on and finished the route and rewrote all of the papers from memory.
Talk about dampened spirits!
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