Very engaging discussion about emission-awareness while birding. Let me throw in a few cents.
Broadening the scope of an outing to include more than birds is definitely a good idea. In past years, the Lab of O has collaborated with the Botanic Gardens to have bird walks at the Arboretum and plant walks at Sapsucker Woods, which I've always tried to attend (so I can learn what to tell people during bird walks when there are no birds :-). I've also joined various walks hosted mainly by the FLLT in the past to learn about tree identification (from Akiva Silver, https://www.fllt.org/profiles/akiva-silver/), animal tracking (from Linda Spielman, https://lindajspielman.com/), etc. We could try to organize "birding plus" walks and invite leaders from other disciplines. Otherwise, as an individual, iNaturalist and Google Lens are resources that can let one identify and learn on their own about what they're seeing. Encouraging field trip participants to donate to FLLT or SPCA is an interesting idea. We might get into a question of which of the many worthy causes we decide to endorse. As club president, I'd rather not make top-down endorsements; instead, we could let each field trip leader decide, since they are after all the ones volunteering to lead. Carbon offsetting via https://www.fingerlakesclimatefund.org/ is also an interesting idea. In fact, I can imagine a feature like this being incorporated into eBird: if on a given day you submit checklists from Myers, Long Point, Montezuma, and Dean's Cove, there's enough information there for the software to estimate the distance traveled, and thus the emission cost of that outing. For club Field Trips, we could also make it a conscious step to compute this, either estimate before or consciously check the odometer afterwards, and tell the participants. Much like how calorie counts are becoming commonplace on menus, perhaps our field trip descriptions should include an estimated carbon cost in dollars per vehicle. The Christmas Bird Count is IMO the wrong thing to focus on when it comes to reducing driving. The count at least has a survey goal, and unless birders' homes happen to coincide with a decent statistical cover of the circle, non-local movement will be necessary. We could aim to encourage biking, but that requires infrastructure investments, especially in winter, and is thus a long term goal. The best we can do, I think, is to minimize the frequent-stop-and-go driving style, e.g., using Dave's leap-frogging idea when possible. This would apply to Atlas surveys also the rest of the year. Chasing rarities and non-local hotspots (like Montezuma) are bigger problems, IMO. Unless one makes a conscious decision not to chase, carpooling is probably the best mitigating solution. Unfortunately, COVID is forcing us to discourage carpooling. To encourage birding more locally, there's the notion of adopting a local patch and birding it year round to see what changes, and maybe learn more about the rest of its non-avian biology if the birding is quiet. Or make your yard its own hotspot by creating habitat, planting native plants, etc. I've been thinking of having more single-destination field trips, as opposed to trips that drive to multiple places. Last weekend's morning at Stewart park was one such trip, which turned out remarkably productive. Unfortunately, there aren't many good single destinations for birding in the winter months, but Spring would be a time to try more of this. Suan --- Birdwatching’s Carbon Problem | Bryan Pfeiffer https://bryanpfeiffer.com/2021/12/02/birdwatchings-carbon-problem/ -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
