Bird research
Walking to the southwest of W6, every now and then you will notice a profusion of pink flagging tape on a tree bole. These trees mark points on a large grid system that covers 10 hectares to the southwest of the W6 weir. This area is known to Hubbard Brook researchers as the "bird area", because the grid system was set up by bird researchers to facilitate the mapping of bird territories in the forest. The grid is 50 x 50 meters and the lines are labeled by letters (A, B, C, D, ...) from east to west, and by numbers (1, 2, 3, ...) from north to south. The tree in the photo marks G -0.5. Negative numbers resulted when the lines were expanded further to the north beyond line 1, and fractional numbers (0.5) resulted when additional lines were marked halfway between each whole-numbered line.
Every season since 1969, a crew of research interns has walked the area in the early mornings when birds are active, and listened for bird calls in order to determine territories or count individuals or locate nesting sites. At this point, the study has produced a rather long record of annual bird abundance for the Hubbard Brook valley.
Click here for a further description of methodology and data.