Date: 11/3/24 5:37 pm From: Pam Hunt <biodiva...> Subject: [NHBirds] November County Challenge as of the 3th
Greetings all,
It was a busy weekend across the Granite State, with birders active in all ten counties. The most impressive gains were made in the southeast, with Hillsborough, Merrimack, and Rockingham all adding 40+ species to their lists. The gains were closer to 20 everywhere else, including first out of the gate Strafford. The list below has reordered the counties based on this evening's species totals, this time including reasonable rarities not yet officially reviewed in eBird. The numbers in parentheses are the current species total, previous species total, and previous rank. I'm still reporting based on the old scoring system, but more on the new ones after the list.
The big shifts here seem to be from Hillsborough, which surged into third place on the backs of some fun finds on Pack Monadnock, and Cheshire, which fell almost as far as its western neighbor rose. Otherwise everyone is in the same order as on Nov 1. But if you looks a little more closely at the scores there are a couple of interesting patterns. While Strafford remains in first place using all four scoring systems, the spread is declining rapidly in the top positions. On Nov 1, the difference between #1 and #2 was 4 percentage points, while on the 3rd is in only 2 points. The same differences between #1 and #3 are 10 and 4 points. At the same time, the difference between #1 and #10 has only shifted two points: from 22 to 20. Superficially, what this means - in part - is that Strafford was quick out of the gate but slowed down over the weekend. You can see this in the proportionally larger gains mentioned previously for Hillsborough, Merrimack, and Rockingham. If you didn't follow that it's OK, it's a little gibberishy even to me. Bottom line: the spread is shrinking noticeably in the top positions, which might put southern counties at an advantage in the month-long race. Time will tell.
I still need to come up with a way to compare the four metrics, but as of this evening they're still pretty variable - this time with regards to the silver medal. Belknap, Merrimack, and Rockingham each come in second based on at least one score, while Hillsborough is a solid third in 3 out of 4.
Expect at least a brief update heading into the Veteran's Day weekend. If things shift dramatically during the week it'll be more in depth, but i won't know until I look at the numbers Friday.
