THE WILSON BULLETIN 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY 



VOL. XXXIII SEPTEMBER, 1921 NO. 3 



OLD SERIES VOL. XXXIII. KEW SERIES VOL. XXVIII 



THE ROADSIDE CENSUS 



BY MARGARET M. NICE AND L. B. NICE 

 NORMAN^ OKLAHO:\[A 



Our discovery of the K();i(lsi<le Census as an aid iit 

 bird study came by accident. On May 30, ]!)20, we started 

 to play with our small daughter a new kind oi' " Roadside 

 Euchre" by counting the Dickcissels tliat were lustily 

 singing " jig-.1ig-jig '" along each side of a five mile stretch 

 of road. After a second Dickcissel game tluit same day — 

 we found they averaged from six to eight a mile — the 

 little girl suggested we count all the birds we saw on the 

 rest of the tri]), a distance of fifty miles. At first tliought 

 this seemed an imi)ossible task for one liurrying along in 

 an automobile, but, nevertheless, we tried it, and found it 

 so worthwiiile that by the middle of July we liad tak(Mi 

 780 miles of Roadside Censuses. 



A Roadside Census is a record of the iiund)er of birds 

 of each kind seen along a particular road, on a ])articular 

 date, between particular hours; that is, to be complete, it 

 should tell the time, location and distance covered besides 

 the temperature and state of the weather. Such a census 

 has a definite, though limited, value: first, it has a distinct 

 use in recording the abundance and distribution of certain 

 birds; and second, it is valuable for comparative purposes, 

 for revealing effects of different conditions of time, place 

 and weather. Two things, however, it does not do: it 

 does not give by any means a complete list of tlie birds of 

 any region, and it does not enable one to sa}^ positively 

 that such and sndi birds do not live in a certain district, 



