The Little Sit

My Binoculars to Binomials class is built around five modules, each with a different focus. These modules have at least one coding assignment, and one birding assignment. I think my favourite of these is the birding assignment for the second module, which is called The Little Sit. Here are the instructions: Step 1: Find a place with a good vantage point of a habitat with some birds.

Step 2: Sit there for 60 minutes.

Step 3: Make a small dataset over that time. You could make a simple map and track where the birds appear. You could observe a single bird and observe it's behaviour. You could track your own mood... or heart rate, or impatience!. The purpose of this assignment is twofold. First, to get people thinking about how the decisions made during data collection can limit (or enhance!) the kinds of stories that can be told. Second, to free birders from the specific demands that tools like eBird have - namely to make checklists and to prioritize the task of counting over observation. I've taught Binoculars to Binomials four times now, and the responses to this assignment have been delightful. Here are some of my favourites:

Zoe Grueskin spent an hour in Prospect Park making note of how close each bird that she observed came to her. Proximity is a very important part of birding, but not one that we typically keep track of. I love how this visualization emphasizes the intimacy of the evening's encounters (that's one socially confident palm warbler!). When Zoe presented this work she spoke of how proximity felt very much relative: even though the Osprey was a full 50' away, the size of the bird made the encounter feel like a close one, while seeing a creeper from a distance of 30' felt very much like remote viewing.

Over in Madrid, Diego Cano spent his hour attempting to "exhaust" a small patch of Parque El Retiro. He made a bespoke data table to keep track of what the birds were doing over time, and them created a simple map of which birds were doing what, where. I've long been a believer in the value of mapping as a tool to understand places and communities, and Diego's small project is a fantastic example of how it can be done. I think a lot of birders could do similar things in their own patches - not following the exact template, but embracing the individuality of each place and how you might go about mapping it.

Emma Pearl Smith sat for 20 minutes observing barn swallow flight until the rain ended her paper-and-pencil data collection early (you can see evidence of the wet conditions at the bottom of this notebook page). Emma's approach was decidedly analogue:

"Every time I saw one come into my field of vision I tracked it visually and let my pen sort of move with it's 'swoops' across the page." The end result is a "data sheet" that is already a visualization - an evocative and visceral one at that.

Janice Kai Chen slipped the usual sound recording script by documenting what she said (and what passers-by said to her) during an hour of birding in Seattle. One of the central takeaways from the course is that "bird data" is also data about places, about moments in time, and about people. Janice's Little Sit project speaks to this in a really delightful way. "See anything cool?"

I have dozens more of these that I'd love to share (there may well be a part two of this post!) but I'll end with an example that speaks to the creative space that is available when you're thinking about collecting data. Wanting to spend his hour observing birds in his back garden, David Hoskins realized his windows offered a perfect grid for indicating what the birds were doing and where. Birds on the lawn? C3. Flyover geese? Row A. The end result is a .CSV, but I'm posting the photo of the window grid because I think it's as much a creative object as the spreadsheet it facilitated.

You don't have to take my class to do your own Little Sit; you just need time, a place, and some birds. But if you'd like to join me and a group of fascinating people, new cohorts of Binoculars to Binomials start next week. Summer cohorts run bi-weekly over 10 weeks, Wednesday evenings or Thursday mornings. Maybe I'll see you in class!