If I am hiking a trail and surveying for butterflies over the entire distance but also spending time on other activities (eg, observing and counting birds) should this be reported as a traveling survey or incidental?
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I get this question quite often for both eBird and eButterfly checklisting surveys. There are several key things to consider here. First, are you able to pay attention enough to completely count all butterflies around you? This is key for the final question of checklisting - The yes or no question - are you reporting all the butterflies (or birds if eBird). If checklisting butterflies was not your primary activity, then you must answer “no”. You can still make it a travel count or timed count or whatever, but if you are not butterflying with full attention, then check off “no” as the answer. BUT, another important consideration is what is your actual count period? If you hiked miles, then ideally you’d break it up into smaller, separate counts based on distance, a gross change in habitat, time, etc etc. A miles long hike as one giant checklist is MUCH less useful than many separate checklist surveys. So, in your case here, you might do incidental reports while hiking, but you stop for 15 or even 30 min. and do an intense checklist survey along the way. That might be one strategy as an example. Does this make sense?
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Thanks for the detailed response. Yes, this all makes perfect sense. I particularly like the latter idea of incidental counts + intermittent focused surveys.