My mother does not put out any bird food., Entering data from her BGBW, I was given the choice of multiple foods, none of which applied. At the end, I am told this question was 'unanswered', did I want to change the details.
Thinking I had missed an option I went to change the details, but there is, indeed, no way to say no food was put out. ( I then had to go through all the survey pages again to finish!).
So the survey cannot differentiate between 'no food put out' and question unanswered. This means there is no way to see the effect of feeding, only to correlate observations with certain types of food compared to others. This is very poor statistically speaking, and undermines the value of the question. It would be valuable to know if feeding per se attracts more birds. Unless it showed that it doesn't, when a large industry would be rather upset! But this is unlikely. Isn't it? We won't know.
Sorry, doggie, 'other' under 'what food did you put out' implies some other food not none. At best it is ambiguous and not usable for analysis.
So what did you tick in the end?
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
If Linda's question is ty me, I didn't tick any as none applied
I thought it was all about birds coming into gardens., or parks, or wherever you wanted to do your count. I may be wrong as always done mine in feeding birds in our garden.
Welcome to the RSPB :0)))
An optimist sees the beauty of the complete rose.A pessimist sees only the thorn .
Good point about the "no food" option. If you do it in a park, or don't put food out you have no option to tick. The "other" option doesn't give any further options.
Annie
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Einstein