{"id":734,"date":"2009-09-24T12:24:02","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T18:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=734"},"modified":"2009-09-25T15:38:03","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T21:38:03","slug":"speaking-of-quizzes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/734","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Quizzes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Beason just informed me of a brand new biweekly audio quiz set up by Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory at http:\/\/rmboaudio.blogspot.com<\/a>.\u00a0 I think this is a marvelous idea.\u00a0 In fact I once harbored aspirations of running an online audio quiz of my own, but now that I actually have the means to run one (via this blog), I find myself reluctant to do it.\u00a0 You can expect an occasional quiz like the one I just ran on crossbills<\/a>, but I’m not planning on it as a regular feature.<\/p>\n

The RMBO quiz will be the only regular, moderated bird sound quiz on the web, as far as I can tell.\u00a0\u00a0 There are certainly automated quizzes on the web — the Patuxent Bird Sound Quiz<\/a> is fun — but I don’t know of any other blog-style audio quizzes whose challenges change on a regular basis.\u00a0 Let me know if I’m missing any!<\/p>\n

I find it odd that audio quizzes are so rare, but then I find it odd that photo quizzes are so rare also. I disagree with Kenn Kaufmann’s assertion<\/a> that online photo quizzes are “legion.”\u00a0 It’s quiz photos that are legion, not photo quizzes.\u00a0 Anybody can post a photo of a mystery bird to the web, but it’s rare to find an outlet with the discipline to do it regularly, publish the answers with educational explanations, and keep track of the winners’ scores.<\/p>\n

By the standard I’ve just laid out, for my money, the best moderated photo quiz in the world is Mr. Bill’s Mystery Quiz<\/a>, now known as the Colorado Field Ornithologists Photo Quiz<\/a>, which was started by Bill Maynard in 2003.\u00a0 The ABA Online Bird Photo Quiz<\/a> is also venerable, dating from the same year, but it only changes monthly, which means they’ve only published 78 quizzes so far.\u00a0 Mr Bill is run weekly, so it’s on quiz 318, believe it or not!\u00a0 If these are the two best and most regular photo quizzes on the web, can it be coincidence that Tony Leukering<\/a> is moderating both of them at the moment?\u00a0 The man is remarkable.<\/p>\n

In addition to their audio quiz, RMBO is starting a photo quiz<\/a> as well.\u00a0 The CFO\/Mr. Bill and ABA quizzes are geared towards intermediate to expert birders, while both RMBO quizzes are going to serve easier fare.\u00a0 And I think that’s appropriate, especially on the sound side, since I find that sound quizzes tend to be harder than photo quizzes — particularly in the absence of information about the time and place of the recording.\u00a0 I look forward to seeing (and hearing) what they post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Beason just informed me of a brand new biweekly audio quiz set up by Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory at http:\/\/rmboquiz.blogspot.com. The RMBO quiz will be the only regular, moderated bird sound quiz on the web, as far as I can tell. There are certainly automated quizzes on the web — the Patuxent Bird Sound Quiz is fun — but I don’t know of any other blog-style audio quizzes whose challenges change on a regular basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-quizzes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}