The discussion on Ovenbirds is an interesting an important topic, especially with 
regard to potential causes of perceived population changes.  I would like to 
comment directly on some of the remarks made with respect to OBBA II.  It should 
be noted that protocol hasn't really changed since the first Atlas.  The codes are 
mostly the same.  A couple have been altered for a few reasons, one of which is 
for more regional consistency. Data from the second Atlas will be comparable to 
that from the first.

In actuality, there isn't much to the "protocol" - it is essentially just birding 
(with special care to document time spent in the field, and observed breeding 
behavior). That "ease of survey factor" been one of our talking points when trying 
to get individuals involved.  It is a citizen science project, and designed to 
capture presence of breeding individuals, not abundance.

As Haans mentioned, this type of survey can often obscure trends of species 
declining in numbers, and that is one of the reasons why it was decided to add 
abundance surveys to the second Atlas.  Each year we had a small paid field staff 
conduct rigorous abundance counts in blocks across the state. Over 14,000 
abundance counts were completed throughout Ohio. While we won't be able to make 
comparisons to the first Atlas (1982-1987) with regards to population changes, it 
will set a baseline dataset for that question to be explored with the third Atlas.

Abundance data are very important, but that does not imply that the general Atlas 
data are not valuable or important. With the Atlas block data, we are able to look 
at a lot of important questions such as species distribution changes, by utilizing 
large number of recreation birders.

Matthew Shumar
Research Associate / Project Coordinator
Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II
The Ohio State University
School of Environment and Natural Resources
2021 Coffey Road
Columbus, Ohio 43210-1085
Phone: 614-247-6458; Fax: 614-292-7432

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