User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
First of all, I would like to say that I enjoyed conducting my field research and that I feel it has been a valuable tool in my understanding of how ecological theory is developed. There are so many factors to consider when developing and implementing sound, scientific research and so yes, I have certainly developed a greater appreciation for the hard work and knowledge that is required.
I have to admit that I struggled in the beginning to even generate a feasible topic. Observing patterns in nature was not something that came readily to me, and I realized quickly that it was a skill I needed to develop. Once I had a topic and a general method, I had initially planned to randomly select my point count locations by overlaying a grid system onto the park map. This did not work as the randomly selected locations I had chosen on paper did not provide the best vantage points in he field and caused unnecessary disturbance to the ducks within the drainage channels. I also had assumed that diurnal sampling, particularly during the early morning hours would be best suited, as it is well known that bird activity is greatest during the morning hours. I quickly discovered that this was indeed the case for passerines, however, the dabbling ducks were much slower to wake. I conducted a couple of trial sampling events in the hours before dusk and this seemed to be when the ducks were most active.
My study area posed several challenges for me as well, as public access was limited to the upper dike areas. This made visibility slightly more challenging, and it was unlike a forest setting where you can potentially access more areas for data collection. Perhaps with permission from parks staff, I could have measured other aspects within the drainage ditches, including water quality and or depth to see if these influenced duck abundance. Once I had decided on my experimental design, the actual data collection was quite simple. I incorporated randomization into my study by using a random number generator to decide the order in which I visited my selected sample locations.
If I had the chance to conduct the research over again, I would have conducted my sampling during the fall months when overwintering waterfowl are typically more prevalent within the park. This potentially would have given me a greater sample size to work with when analyzing my data, as overall duck abundance at all point count locations was lower than I had expected.
