Category: Post 9: Field Research Reflections

Having wrapped up my data collection and started writing my paper, I can honestly say I’ve learned a lot about the design and implementation of ecological studies.  My study design changed many, many times from my initial ideas to the one I finally settled on.  I found my main problem in study design was aiming higher than my knowledge, skills, and available equipment would permit.  Counting songbird species?  “That sounds doable” I’d think to myself after reading a study on bird behavior during the initial brainstorming for my project.  But then I’d go to my study site and realize I was in over my head.  With limited experience identifying birds, I quickly realized that I’d need to narrow my focus to a couple easily identifiable species in order to maintain accurate, high-quality observations. (Even then, I suspect I’ve likely misidentified the odd duck or 2….females without males present are still tricky!)

Then came all the things I hadn’t considered in my initial design. What if a bird flys away in the middle of an observation period? What if they wander into the bushes and I can’t see them any more? What if there are no birds on the pond when I arrive? All these things I couldn’t plan for required little adjustments as I went along.

My replication targets proved overly enthusiastic as well and by the end of June I realized that I’d need to adjust my goals in order to complete my data collection in a timely manner.  That said, I managed to collect 90 individual bird observations, for a total of about 3600 usable behavior observations.  Its been fun playing with the data to see what patterns I can find, though without proper statistical analysis I have no idea if what I’m seeing is significant or not!

Reading studies that are similar in design to my own, but seeing how many more birds the authors observed for their data collection, gives me a new appreciation for the work that goes into these types of projects!

I really enjoyed visiting my study site. This artificial wetland is located about 5 minutes from my house but I’d never been before now!   I’m used to walking through natural areas in a rush, usually while walking my dogs. I was amazed by the number of different bird species I saw when I finally sat down quietly and just observed.  While adamantly not a morning person, my favorite observation period ended up being my morning hours.  The pond was always so still and quiet, undisturbed by human presence.  The songbirds were so loud!

Conducting this experiment has given me a different view of the natural areas I frequent for recreation purposes. I look forward to returning to my site in the future and being able to recognize the different species I’ve identified during my research observations!

This field research project has been very enlightening, both because I conducted a field research project from scratch and learned first hand the results and observations of my study of the effect of ambient temperature on bird activity, but also because it was the first field research project I ever completed and I learned along the way many errors that I had made that could have potentially affected the study. First of all, when I had first made my observations in my garden about bird activity in warm weather I didn’t take into account other variables such as migration timing. I began my observations in April when bird migration was beginning but conducted my field research in May and June when some bird species may have been fully settled. I wish that when I first noticed a potential pattern that I had done more research into what previous studies have shown as this would have helped me to properly form a hypothesis. My initial hypothesis was incorrectly formulated, mostly because I was inexperienced.

Next, I had some trouble during my field research as I had a hard time identifying some of the bird species. Woodpeckers, blue jays and cardinals were easy to identify but I often fumbled with my identification of smaller species such as sparrows, wrens and nuthatches, all of which are common in New Jersey.

Other variables affected my research, predominantly competition for food with other species. Although the bird feeder I used for point count research was squirrel proof, within a few days the squirrels did learn how to use it and it appeared that certain species of birds would not approach the feeder when squirrels were present. However, while this may have affected the number of birds that were counted and thus may affect the results regarding bird abundance and ambient temperature, competition for food sources is a real threat for bird species and needs to also be evaluated.

In hindsight, I feel as though my field research project would have benefited by having conducted thorough research at the beginning which would have aided me in my hypothesis. Secondly, finding an alternative way to identify species would have helped. Perhaps if I had first spent time becoming more accurate in this regard it would have helped. Lastly, if I had been able to better control competition with the squirrels, it would not have had a potential affect on the results.

Overall the field research project was relatively straight forward. However, there will be many sources of error and factors which may affect the data that can be discussed in the final report. For example, if more bird species were studied this might have changed the trends. Or if the observations were made at a different time of year.

As a chemistry student, designing a non-lab based experiment was daunting at first however, it went along with only minor hiccups after the first few observations. It also took longer than I would like to come up with an idea for a project.

My time spent on this research project gave me a greater understanding of how to conduct and implement a research study. It also allowed me to see why ecology is such a diverse field to study.

During my field research study I did encounter a couple of issues. A few of the issues I observed were prior to initiation of the field study and I was able to make the alteration to the designs. The one issue I ran into in the field study on site was as the morning went on the number of people that were at the park increased which increased the amount of disturbance occurring while I was trying to observe all the birds present. After the first day of sampling I decided to decrease the amount of time I spent at each survey location to decrease the chance of being interrupted by a third party.

Engaging in the practice of ecology has given me a greater appreciation of those who put the effort into all these studies on ecology. Before I came into this class I never conducted my own field experiment. I had only ever completed assessments on projects following standardized procedures for permitting purposes.