The figure is biased, however, because the Corpus Christi watch was only manned for 155 hours. Most of the counting was done by two volunteers who managed to take a few days off from their normal jobs. We are probably missing much of the migration. Ideally, the watch should be manned from mid-August to mid-October. In practice, we are covering weekends and an occasional week day.

It doesn't take a lot of talent to make a contribution. It is great if someone can identify each species when it is a mere speck, five miles away. In practice, it would be a huge help if someone could just count unidentified raptors on a day when we would otherwise have no data.