User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
When it came to creating my graph for my final results of my field data I really wanted to represent my data in a way that was very straight forward and clear. This was important for me to do because I wanted the “reader” to be able to look at my graph and quickly understand the results that were concluded. Because I did 5 different point count stations that all had varying degrees of urbanization I wasn’t able to show this data through a line graph. So, instead I decided the best way for me to present the data was through a simple but very useful bar graph. The final data was not exactly what I had predicted it to be. I had predicted that I would find the greatest number of birds using an area that had the most shelter (no urbanization) compared to areas with little shelter (fully urbanized) or areas with intermediate amounts of shelter (intermediately urbanized). This did not actually end up being the case. Instead the data suggest that the largest number of birds using an area were the intermediately urbanized areas. These were the areas where there was about half forest area and half urbanized areas (lawn/house area). Because these areas had some urbanization, there were bird feeds and even bird baths present. This seems to be a favorable circumstance for the birds; they are provided shelter through the trees, as well as food and water from the provided baths and feeders.
Another thing that caught my eye when examining the data was the surprisingly high amount of birds using the area that was just lawn space. This is the only area that has complete urbanization. No trees, all man-made shelter areas and lots of bird feeders around. This area had almost the same number of birds using the area as did the areas of all forest. Once again though, I’m curious if this is due to the large amount of bird feeders that area around the completely urbanized area.
One other thing that I did wonder about when looking at my final data was if the smokey weather had anything to do with the lack of birds I observed under those conditions. The days of heavy smoke from the wildfires was on the same day that I went to the point count station 1 and 2. At location 1, had observed 3 fewer birds from the previous times I visited the site and at location 2, I once again observed 3 fewer birds than previous times I had visited. This will be something I take into consideration when composing my final project.
