Bird vs. Fish

Critique of the Federal Birding Report

In 2011, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) published “Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis.” It was created as an addendum to the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. They claim it’s the most extensive survey of wildlife recreation in the U.S. to date. “Overall, about 9,300 detailed […]

Extracting NetCDF Values to a Shape File

Here’s a script that loops over climate NetCDF bricks in a folder and extracts the values for each layer in the brick of each file, in this case averaged over polygons in a shape file. At this point, you have a data frame called “climate” that has all your data long-form. You can cast this […]

Why Define What it is to Be a Birder?

I think the crux our pursuit in defining what it is to be a birder is that we’re looking to define criteria for membership of our tribe, which would be the group of people that “speaks the same language as us.” We recognize each other by our habits and field gear, and location. We can assume […]

Thinking of Birding As “Serious Leisure”

My colleague and friend Dr. Susan I. Stewart pointed me in the right direction regarding terminology of the recreation, leisure and tourism disciplines, in order to turn up literature about birding. “Serious leisure” investigates the recruitment and retention of people into pursuits that are more serious than common notions of recreation, but still considered a hobby […]

How This Problematic NetCDF File Was Fixed

I can’t be thankful enough for my godsend Twitter friend/NetCDF guru Michael Sumner for coming in clutch to rectify this problematic file! As I take my baby steps in learning how to deal with NetCDF files (~3 weeks after being thrown into the “deep end” and trying to tread water), I realized that one of […]

Next NetCDF Issue I Discovered Today

Another problem I ran into: apparently Nov-Dec. 1999 monthly averages for HADCM3 B1 precipitation, where I flipped the axes in NCO, are blank. problem <- brick(“hadcm3.b1.pr.NAm.grid_monthly.nc_out.nc”) plot(problem$X1999.11.15) plot(problem$X1999.12.16) The above returns the correct axes, but blank plots. The problem is present before I flipped the axes, so I have to go back to the original […]

My 1st Breeding Bird Survey Route!

It feels appropriate that I made my 1st contribution to the BBS today, as a form of conservation patriotism! It’s one of the longest-running and most extensive citizen science efforts in the world, and I was happy to kick off my Independence Day contributing to this data set. The timing also comes on the heels […]

What Does it Mean to be a Birder?

What is a birder, anyway? Several birders have made stabs at what it is to be defined as a birder, in part spurred by questions of how to count how many of us are out there. First, the Birdwatcher’s Companion (2004) seek’s to differentiate “birding” from “bird-watching,” as terminology has notably changed over the past 20 […]

July Blooms

round-leaved orchid slender lady’s-tresses club-spur orchid (bog) spotted coralroot (Ridges) cross-leaved milkwort field milkwort whorled milkwort winged loosestrife false-loosestrife rough-seeded clammy-weed common dodder false pimpernel large-flowered yellow false foxglove eastern figwort Canada horse-balm marsh hedge-nettle American water-horehound northern water-horehound flat-leaved bladderwort brook lobelia Jimsonweed Apple-of-Peru Virginia ground-cherry round-headed bush-clover prairie bush-clover Illinois tick-trefoil partridge pea […]

How I’ve Been Processing Climate Data

From a THREDDS server, I’m using the NetcdfSubset portal to obtain a spatial subset of my climate data set of interest. Since the files I need are too big to download from their HTTP server, they instead give me an OPeNDAP URI with the spatial subset info. I then pass that to nccopy from the […]