For the initial collection of my data, I had originally planned to observe my field study site at three specific times per day (high tide, mid tide, and low tide) and count the number of seagulls within view at each of those times. However, even though the site is close to my residence, I found that making the time to visit my site three times daily to be challenging. Therefore, I decided to reduce it to two times per day (high tide and low tide) and this was more manageable.
I used a tide tracking app called “Tides Near Me” to determine the high and low tide times, and visited my site at approximately those times and counted the seagulls. I also took note of the weather during each observation to investigate if this would have any influence on my results. I repeated this process for five days to produce five replicates, and didn’t encounter any major challenges.
The only surprising finding I encountered was that the number of seagulls varied quite significantly, as there were some observation periods where I counted little to no seagulls, and others when there were close to forty.
At this point, I haven’t identified any need to modify my approach besides changing the number of observations per day, but I will continue to assess my sampling strategy as I collect more data.