Overview

This report provides information on guest visitation at the Bird Observatory from 17 February through 30 March 2024. Over this period, our team hosted 1827 guests. This total includes guests that attended special events provided for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (23 February; 12 guests), the SERC leadership team (05 March; 8 guests), Smithsonian Associates (15 March; 25 guests), Smithsonian Associates (22 March; 25 guests), American University Birding Club (23 March; 16 guests), and a Donor tour with Helen Dubois (27 March; 6 guests). Special event activities included a Bird Friendly Coffee Demonstration, Binocular training, and Bird House tour.

Note on this report: The content herein (including the information above) is programmatically generated based on the raw data. The raw data are recorded and stored in Google Sheets – to view these data, go to this link.

Scheduled demonstrations

This period also included formal, planned demonstrations (Bird Friendly coffee demonstration, Bird banding) with a total demonstration audience of 717 guests. Herein, I am defining planned demonstrations as those that are on the Zoo website’s demonstration schedule (currently Bird banding and Bird Friendly):

Date Demonstration title Number of guests Is the count estimated?
17 February Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 82 yes
24 February Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 124 yes
02 March Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 52 no
09 March Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 30 no
16 March Bird banding 37 no
16 March Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 123 no
23 March Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 68 no
30 March Bird banding 59 no
30 March Bird Friendly coffee demonstration 142 no

Guest demography

We are interested in determining the number of visitors per day and age class. Knowing the information will help us better determine how to reach audiences with our outreach materials.

Methods

We count the number of guests in a given time period and estimate the age of the guest in the age classes Pre-K, K-5, Middle school, High school, and Adult. The person counting (volunteers, interns, Brian) records the information on a data sheet in real-time and is dedicated to the task during the duration of their count. As much as possible, the counting activity is completed without the knowledge of the guests.

Results

The table below provides a tabular view of the total number of visitors for each day (not including special events), by age class:

Date Day Pre-K K-5 Middle school High school Adult Total
17 February Saturday 15 37 9 5 120 186
24 February Saturday 15 27 13 7 202 264
02 March Saturday 5 3 2 1 74 85
08 March Friday 5 10 7 6 28 56
09 March Saturday 2 13 4 4 58 81
16 March Saturday 20 32 5 8 166 231
23 March Saturday 0 10 2 0 88 100
29 March Friday 76 70 8 8 192 354
30 March Saturday 66 65 23 8 216 378

Across days in our sample, adult guests made up 65.9% of the total guest population at the Bird Observatory (outside of special events; n = 1735 guests). The next largest group was the K-5 age range, which made up 15.4% of the guest population. The distribution across all age classes is illustrated in the diagram below.

Proportions of guests across days may, however, give an artificial indication of what we might expect as the sample size increases. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the age distribution appears to vary considerably by date (e.g., weather and school vacations may impact the age distribution of the guests). For example, the table below shows the proportion of guests of each age class on a given day – 17 February was on a holiday weekend (no school Monday) and I believe the number of K-5 guests was elevated as a result of this. Likewise, the weather on 2 March was terrible – very few families came in on that day and thus almost all of the guests were adults.

Date Day Pre-K (%) K-5 (%) Middle school (%) High school (%) Adult (%)
17 February Saturday 8.1 19.9 4.8 2.7 64.5
24 February Saturday 5.7 10.2 4.9 2.7 76.5
02 March Saturday 5.9 3.5 2.4 1.2 87.1
08 March Friday 8.9 17.9 12.5 10.7 50.0
09 March Saturday 2.5 16.0 4.9 4.9 71.6
16 March Saturday 8.7 13.9 2.2 3.5 71.9
23 March Saturday 0.0 10.0 2.0 0.0 88.0
29 March Friday 21.5 19.8 2.3 2.3 54.2
30 March Saturday 17.5 17.2 6.1 2.1 57.1

Viewed as a boxplot, we can clearly see that the majority of Bird Observatory guests over this period were adults. We can also see that there is considerable variation in the top two age classes (Adult and K-5) across the sampling dates:

The takeaway: These data support my anecdotal findings that the majority of the guests in the Bird Observatory are adults. I do not believe that we are currently doing enough to reach this audience with the Bird Observatory’s interpretive content (though the demonstrations, especially Bird Friendly coffee, really help!).

Caveat: This represents a first attempt at enumerating guests by age (and the first attempt to enumerate the visitation of guests outside of formal demonstrations or special events). Although the pattern fits my perception of visitors (and some informal/nonexhaustive samples that I took early on), much more data is needed to determine if this pattern holds. Additionally:

  • Many adults come with children (though not the majority … as that would be about 3 adults per child!) – these data do not imply that the focus should be shifted to adults at the expense of providing content to young (K-5) children.
  • The age distribution may change considerably during the summer vacation busy season.
  • It would be interesting to see how the age distribution compares with the distribution in the Bird House as a whole. For example, if a higher or lower proportion of children coming into the Bird Observatory than the Bird House, then our results may be biased by who the Bird Observatory attracts.

Time of day

Another goal is to determine the time (or times) of day in which the Bird Observatory is most active. We currently open at around 10:00 and close at 2:00 pm. This will help us to determine when, on a given day, our staffing needs are greatest. The plot below shows the proportion (of a given day) in which guests arrive at the Bird Observatory.

The takeaway: If this pattern holds, this may suggest that we should focus our coverage later in the day.

Caveat: It is way too early to take the plot above seriously. This caveat is huge – the peak is during the Bird Friendly Coffee Demonstration (and we are luring them in with the aroma of free coffee!). Incorporating more Fridays into this analysis should help remove that bias.