Numbers don’t always tell the full story

I am working with Northumberland County Council’s Space for Shorebirds programme, supporting them to evaluate their impact and understand what difference they are making.

The team measures bird disturbance on a number of sites every month and we are starting to build a longer term picture over a period of years. We want to see disturbance go down. More realistically, the target is that it should not increase. This is where wider context really matters because the one thing that would reduce disturbance significantly is to get rid of all the birds. No birds = no disturbance.

If you take the numbers in isolation then busy beaches which are no longer used as roosting or feeding grounds are going to look fantastic. And, beaches where bird populations are starting to increase are maybe going to have a lot more disturbance, simply because there are more birds.

And that is why a little bit of storytelling goes a long way – a narrative around the numbers, together with some other measures that all come together to create a robust evaluation. This is a gentle Friday reminder to question the figures and to dig a little deeper to understand the bigger picture.

Image description: a flock of small white birds (sanderling) look like they are coming into land in shallow waters. The photo was taken by Space for Shorebirds rangers from a distance, using a long lens, so the birds are not disturbed.