Hey Chris- 230 is awesome! I expect it's going to "blow up" soon with all of the attention the list is getting in other outlets.
When I went to bed last night, I was thinking about that number... 1400 people all simultaneously watching birds for science in 1952... okay, so maybe it was our national interest in the moon (the first lunar landing being in 1966) but in the absence of the internet, one has to imagine that was no small feat to get that many people both looking at the moon AND counting birds AND recording flight directions, etc! Now fast-forward to a time when so many more people have high-power spotting scopes (me currently excluded... are there any Leica sponsors out there??? ) and the birding community is hyper-connected via lists like this one, and it seems very plausible that we could pull something off on an even greater scale. Yeah, that idea kept me awake for another hour last night... cheers David ____________________________________________________ David A. La Puma, Ph.D. Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources Online Teaching Portfolio: http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching Lockwood lab: http://rci.rutgers.edu/~jlockwoo Websites: http://www.woodcreeper.com http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodcreeper On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Chris Tessaglia-Hymes <[email protected]>wrote: > Wow! 1400 moon-watching participants in 1952! Yeah, we've got a ways to go > to match that number. The NFC-L list is now at 230 actively subscribed email > addresses, and climbing. NFC-L has been a wonderful outlet for great night > flight call discussions and idea sharing; and this is only about 5 months > into the life of the list! > > Keep it up everyone! > > Good night listening and moon-watching! > > Sincerely, > Chris T-H > > David La Puma wrote: > > Since we're on the topic of moonwatching, I thought I'd send a link to the > Lowery and Newman paper that Andrew mentioned a few weeks ago. > Here's a direct link to the paper: > http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v083n04/p0547-p0586.pdf > > and here you can search the ornithological literature for more papers that > might be of interest: > http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/search.php > > You could search for George Lowery (in the Author box) and Migration (in > the keyword box) and find the above paper, plus a few others. > > Note that nearly 1400 bird students and astronomers participated in the > study by moon-watching over four nights in October of 1952!! Hey Chris, > what's the NFC list membership up to? We may need to do a little recruiting- > but I bet we could round up enough folks to make a go of it! > > Good Birding and Reading > > David > ____________________________________________________ > David A. La Puma, Ph.D. > Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources > > Online Teaching Portfolio: > http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching > > Lockwood lab: > http://rci.rutgers.edu/~jlockwoo <http://rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ejlockwoo> > > Websites: > http://www.woodcreeper.com > http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com > > Photos: > http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodcreeper > > > > > > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Andrew Farnsworth < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> FYI - I think there was a 1950 paper too, though I cannot remember. . >> .When everyone is ready, it is high time that we replicate Lowery and Newman >> (1966). With today's technology for synthesizing information, we could do >> it in a much more timely and large scale manner, AND we could combine it >> with FC and radar data in a way not possible in the 60s. . . >> >> Best, >> Andrew >> >> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 07:20, Ted Floyd <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi, all. >>> >>> I was recently contacted by somebody who's preparing an obituary for >>> William A. Rense, a leading solar physicist of the 20th century. Here's >>> one of his publications: >>> >>> Rense, W.A. 1946. Astronomy and ornithology. Popular Astronomy >>> 54(2):55-73. >>> >>> The article presents all the calculations necessary for "moonwatching," >>> that is, for determining the number of birds on nocturnal migration >>> within a given volume of sky. And, interestingly, this article precedes >>> by several month's George Lowery's famous 1946 paper on the same topic >>> (Auk 63:175-211). Lowery and Rense were colleagues, actually, so this >>> isn't a disputed-priority thing. But it's interesting how we remember >>> the famous Lowery paper, not the original Rense article. (Even though >>> Rense's appeared in a relatively high-profile venue. Auk... Popular >>> Astronomy... Please.) In a sense, this is also a tribute to Lowery's >>> commendable interdisciplinary outlook on science and nature. >>> >>> What's also cool about the Rense article is that it reminds us that all >>> of this had basically been worked out 40+ years earlier, during a >>> brief--and virtually completely forgotten--"golden age" of research on >>> nocturnal migration. Moonwatching techniques are well described in >>> papers published in 1902 (Bull. Wisc. Nat. Hist. Soc.), 1906 (Popular >>> Astronomy), and again in 1906 (Auk). >>> >>> (During that brief period of serious professional interest in the topic, >>> there is an intriguing paper--by one Henry H. Kopman--on, among other >>> things, the flight calls of wood-warblers. Farnsworth in a previous >>> life...) >>> >>> Anyhow, I thought some folks would be interested. I'll let y'all know >>> when the Rense obit. is published. >>> >>> Best, >>> Ted >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> >>> Ted Floyd >>> Editor, Birding >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> >>> Please support the American Birding Association: Click on >>> http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. >>> >>> Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: >>> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 >>> >>> Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: >>> http://twitter.com/abaoutreach >>> >>> Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: >>> http://www.aba.org >>> >>> -- >>> NFC-L List Info: >>> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME >>> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES >>> -- >>> >> >> > > -- > Chris Tessaglia-Hymes > Listowner, NFC-L > Ithaca, New > [email protected]http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOMEhttp://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES > > -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html --
