Thursday, November 22, 2012

Circle Re-hauled: Out of Nine, Twenty-five

The Tucson Valley CBC circle has traditionally been divided into nine sectors. In recent years, with an increasing number of birders, Larry Liese found that each needed to be subdivided, and he created about 20 sections, a big improvement. In my experience in coordinating CBC's over the past 18 years (and participating on them for 25 years), I've found that area boundaries are more effective with the participant in mind, rather than for the ease of the compiler in drawing them. So I've looked at available habitat and despite my plans on keeping things mostly the same, have completely redrawn the boundaries and made 25 areas. One of the biggest changes is that I've divided the Santa Cruz River and Rillito River (some of the best habitat for diversity) into smaller chunks adjacent to upland or urban habitats to "share the wealth."

I'm going to try to keep people assigned to the general region where they were last year, but with approximately 50% of the participants being new to the circle, this is a good year to be having some new area boundaries. I'm always hoping to accommodate any wishes, but I've tried to make each area interesting with some hot spots and a chance of finding something good. More on some of these areas in upcoming blogs.


No comments:

Post a Comment