Species which exhibit rapid movement or high proportions of movement would then be considered. For some species, such as welcome swallows, which often exhibit very high proportions of rapid, circling movement patterns, often overtaking an observer, very few methods will work. However, for other species it is expected that methods of estimating animal abundance which compensate for movement will be able to be developed. Typical species for which these newly developed methods will work will be listed. This method was repeated for many different species over different time periods, seasons and locations.
Much more data needs to be collected before a truly representative data set is collected.
The speed of movement of an animal is important with much of the current theory being invalidated once the animal's rate of movement goes beyond a certain value, normally recorded as the travelling speed of the observer. In conjunction with data on the proportion of time spent in the defined movement categories, this should enable researchers to determine if the population size of the species of interest can be determined by the methods they propose to use. To investigate movement speeds and patterns of movement special equipment has been designed and constructed. This equipment consists of two tripods mounted with optical rotary encoders. One of the tripods uses two encoders to measure both elevation and azimuth while the second tripod has a third encoder measuring azimuth only.