Scioly.org

60.

Kokonilly wrote:60.

What was the test like?

amerikestrel wrote:

Kokonilly wrote:60.

What was the test like?

It was a set of 11 or so stations, each themed to something. There were about 6 stuffed specimens. It was pretty tough (the lady said that she looked at the nats test from last year and thought it was too easy, so she made it harder). Each station was 3.5 minutes long.

For C, HARD. Most of it was not identification- it was more like a test, with a certain bird used to illustrate a point. One station on Anatomy, one on Digestion, one on ID, another on ID, one on flight, one on ID, one on nests (matching column...lengthy nest description to bird....12 BIRDS), two on miscellany, and one on feathers... 7 vocalizations, and about 8 tie-breakers focusing on weird topics like the physics of flight to evolution of birds. The specimens were badly preserved birds, crammed into plastic tubes.
I got 13th. My partner and I did not finish the nesting stations- of about 15 questions total (including the matching), we answered three. That is what killed us.
From what I heard, the B test was extremely easy- ID then questions, well preserved, museum-quality mounted birds.
The Gelinas team did better than I did last year. It was a little bittersweet, but I'm happy for them.
Koko, it was ten stations, minus calls. BTW< it was awesome to meet you.

paleonaps wrote:For C, HARD. Most of it was not identification- it was more like a test, with a certain bird used to illustrate a point. One station on Anatomy, one on Digestion, one on ID, another on ID, one on flight, one on ID, one on nests (matching column...lengthy nest description to bird....12 BIRDS), two on miscellany, and one on feathers... 7 vocalizations, and about 8 tie-breakers focusing on weird topics like the physics of flight to evolution of birds. The specimens were badly preserved birds, crammed into plastic tubes.
I got 13th. My partner and I did not finish the nesting stations- of about 15 questions total (including the matching), we answered three. That is what killed us.
From what I heard, the B test was extremely easy- ID then questions, well preserved, museum-quality mounted birds.
The Gelinas team did better than I did last year. It was a little bittersweet, but I'm happy for them.
Koko, it was ten stations, minus calls. BTW< it was awesome to meet you.

Much more eloquently put. I can't quite remember much from that day. And the specimens were so hard to look at!
I didn't find the calls very difficult, but we didn't finish a single station - not enough practice, I guess. And yeah, it was cool to meet you too.

I have a textbook on bird anatomy, which was our saving grace.

This makes me sad I didn't get to nats, because those things were exactly what I studied. I'm sure I could have medaled.

Oh well.

The nest thing was kind of my own fault, because I trusted my guide for them. It would have been perfectly sufficient for a normal test. But for a station like that, it wasn't. Some of the questions were pretty vague, too.

We really didn't have enough practice and ran out of time everywhere. At the 6 minutes at the end, we filled in random bubbles and wrote in miscellaneous answers in the blanks. I'm just glad we didn't get last.

amerikestrel wrote:This makes me sad I didn't get to nats, because those things were exactly what I studied. I'm sure I could have medaled.

Oh well.

I studied that too. My specialty was general bird facts (I even got the Frank B. Gill textbook), but hardly any of that came up at states.