User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
While collecting the data, some difficulties faced were the number of people on the trail and attempting to identify the number of individuals for each species. On the first point, when making observations there were times when tour groups of children would approach the area to observe birds. Although they attempted to remain silent, the sheer number of people in one location made it that the birds were not nearing the area. Approximately five minutes after the groups would leave, the birds would return to this area. To address this issue, my sampling design will be modified such that if there are touring groups in the area, I would wait five minutes after the group has left before beginning the data collection.
On the second point of identifying the number of individuals for each species, unless the individuals are tagged it is challenging to determine the exact number of individuals there are for each species. To address this issue, I decided that species diversity would be assessed for this study rather than abundance.
The data collected was slightly surprising in that the abundance of individuals for each species was greater in colder weather. The diversity of species was similar in colder temperature as compared to warmer temperatures. Despite these observations, only five replicates have been collected thus far, it will interesting to see how/if things change.
