Nice sunny day morning for the Working Bee

Lovely morning to be out there. Many hands make for light work and in a couple of hours quite a bit was done! Thanks to all that showed up.

Statistics!

At the Lillico Penguin platform the volunteers complete a form at the end of each shift, and report on the number of visitors, the number of birds spotted, and any other noteworthy observations. This data is carefully compiled and we can get interesting information like this:

In the above diagram we note that 40% of the visitors come in January and the majority of birds are seen in December.

Statistics are always a little tricky, and we do our best using Excel, you have to take into consideration that 2004 for instance represents jan/feb/mar... and oct/nov/dec, because 'one season' spans two years. And therefore the 2010 figures are a little misleading as this season's data has not been entered (oct/nov/dec) into the spreadsheet, and similarly for 2003 as it doesn't include the (jan/feb/mar) figures. 

More data:

From the above data we can read that visitor numbers are steadily increasing and so are the observed birds. This might be because the penguins are getting more and more used to people and that our artificial burrows and weeding projects are working to make the platform a more attractive place for them to breed.

The above table can be used to estimate how many birds and visitors you could expect in any given month. Of course you are more likely to find more visitors on a balmy Christmas evening than a wet and windy evening no matter what month.

If anyone likes specific information please request it in a comment below.