Ornithology B/C

[pikachu4919]

Ornithology B/C: Participants will be assessed on their knowledge of North American birds.

Ornithology Wiki

Ornithology Test Exchange

Past Threads: 2010, 2011, 2020

Past Question Marathons: 2020

[kman1234t]

This year's rules, unlike last year's, don't mention scientific names at all. So theoretically, half the test could be asking the common name of birds, and the other 50% the scientific name.

Is soinc's intention to get rid of asking for scientific names all together?
Also why would the limit the number of birds per station on regionals and states?

[jaspattack]

I really hate that they got rid of scientific names - That's the thing I'm most upset about. Especially when there were rules clarifications based around ambiguous species on the list last year... I think eliminating them completely just makes it worse.

[sneepity]

I wouldn't mind so much if rules had explicitly forbidden scientific names at all, or providing a limit on how much of the event could be based off asking scientific names.

Instead, the rules seem to be written to ignore the existence of scientific names altogether? When people were expecting fixes to the Orni list, they thought they would put in the scientific names of the birds that were missing it, not remove the scientific names for the birds that did have them.
I could probably deal with that. Maybe they just wanted us to compile the scientific names by ourselves, which is what we effectively had to do last year anyway.
Of course, scientific names in the list specify which species when a common name covers multiple (looking at you, Screech Owl). As jaspattack said, removing scientific names doesn't do much for reducing the ambiguity. (although I suppose it removes contradictions between common name and scientific name, like Clapper Rail)

But rather than say scientific names can or cannot be tested, they were simply omitted from the rules. Now scientific names can still be tested, in keeping with the idea that just because rules do not mention it does not mean it's off-limits as long as it's relevant, but instead of being part of ID, they count as information about the bird.


And finally, the new station rule.
I am fairly mad about this. I don't think it actually improves the event, just makes one more thing the test writer needs to work around.
One bird per station at regional level.... that's not a lot. Most challenging Orni tests give you 1-3 minutes per station with a few birds each. To keep the same level of difficulty, test writers would have to split those up to 1 minute or even 30 second stations. This doesn't improve my experience as a competitor. It just means I waste more time moving stations, the invitational host doesn't save any ink or paper because there were already enough stations for each team to be at one anyway, and it gives me less control over how I spend my time on the test.

"But wait!" you might say. Why not just have one bird per station, but have many in-depth questions about it? Wouldn't that improve the event?
Well to me... yes and no. Nothing forces you to ask mundane questions like clutch size or wingspan. You can have a bird, ask a few interesting/in-depth questions, and move on to the next one. What focusing on one bird too much does, though, is make the test "riskier" for competitors, in terms of point values.
Almost everyone messes up ID sometimes. When you miss an ID, you usually miss the subsequent questions about it, because you are using the wrong information. If every bird only has a few questions attached to it, that's not a big deal and you don't lose too many points.
However, with only one bird per station, if you mess up the ID, odds are that you'll miss the whole station. This format punishes small mistakes far more.
Additionally, not every team has time to study every bird on the list. That's fine, and I'm not arguing it's unfair if they score worse, but I think they should still receive a score that reflects what effort they did put in, rather than luck regarding the test writer's choice of questions. With a lot of birds, odds are that at least some of the birds they did study will appear, and that many birds they did not will also pop up. However, when this is restricted to a few birds, luck is more involved. If the test writer chooses mostly birds that you covered, great, and you score better than if it had been a test with more birds. If the test writer chooses mostly birds you did not cover, you score worse than if it had been a test with more birds and don't get to put what you did study to use.

And, yes, I know that there will always be bad writers with any rules. However, I think the point of the rules is to allow good test writers to continue writing good tests and to give better guidance for writers who write lower-quality tests. In my opinion, the rule changes do neither.

And finally ID stations are put in mostly as easy points for reducing ties near the bottom of the score distribution, and the new rule disallows that as well.

[Avalanche]

Hey,

I'm new to ornithology but did herp last time it was a thing. I was looking for some recommendations for good Ornithology books. If anybody has any just recommend them. Thanks!

[Krish2007]

Hey,

I'm new to ornithology but did herp last time it was a thing. I was looking for some recommendations for good Ornithology books. If anybody has any just recommend them. Thanks!

I'm mostly quoting the wiki, but if you want a field guide, then Peterson's field guide and Sibley's field guide are both really good field guides with a moderate amount of information and every bird on the list. Those 2 field guides are better if you are using them for identifying the birds, but if you want more information, then use the Smithsonian or National Geographic field guides. If you want a textbook, then Ornithology by Frank B. Gill is a nice one. I use the Peterson guide and it works pretty well for me. I'm not an expert on this, but I hope this helps you.

[DragonTownEpic]

I haven't used the Sibley field guide, but I've found the Peterson field guide to be decent for ID help. However, it's really not all that great for information. Personally, I don't really use my field guide at all, but I don't know if that applies to other people.

[jaspattack]

I find field guides to be largely unnecessary for most events, but maybe that's just me. Any event I've used where I had the option of using a field guide I mainly just used it in practice to help with ID. If there's any valuable information from a field guide you can just put it in the binder, but a majority of the time they're just useful for pictures (which can be found in spades on the internet anyways).

[sophisSyo]

I've never been a fan of field guides for ornithology either, honestly. There are countless photos available for practice online and through birdbot (and! you can modify birdbot settings to make ID harder hehe), and more information on individual birds on websites than there is in most field guides. I'm going to second Krish2007 on the textbook though, I really like Gill's Ornithology textbook – it has a ton of great information about avian physiology, behavior, etc., and has cool stuff on individual birds scattered throughout. So I'd say there's more information you can gather online for binder sheets (you know – distribution, appearance, etc etc) than you can retrieve from a field guide, but ornithology textbooks generally go a lot more in depth on the specifics of birds than what you can easily find online.

[sophisSyo]

Seconding all the opinions above, as field guides aren't great on the day of competition (you're not going to flip through 200+ pages looking for a yellow bird with white eyerings and two white wingbars) except for when you're stuck deciding between two species.
viewtopic.php?f=313&t=15391&start=10#p397670
I also found this post from last year very helpful. While learning all the flashy males in the first place can seem quite overwhelming (and it's okay if that's what you want to stick to for a while), learning general characteristics that help you ID females and juveniles as well pays off much more in the long run.