Weekly Viz 2018-01-22

Movement of Turkey Vultures in North and South America

About Makeover Monday

MakeoverMonday is a social data project: “Each week we post a link to a chart, and its data, and then you rework the chart. Maybe you retell the story more effectively, or find a new story in the data. We’re curious to see the different approaches you all take. Whether it’s a simple bar chart or an elaborate infographic, we encourage everyone of all skills to partake. Together we can have broader conversations about and with data.”

Starting from Jan 08, 2018, I decided to put aside one hour on Monday weekly to create some visualization and find some insights from the data.

The datasets are published each week at: MakeoverMonday Datasets.

Makeover Monday 0122

This week’s data is about the observation record of turkey vulture migration in North America and South America. The original viz could be found in this link, and more information about the data and research could be found in this article.

My Visualization

I spent about 2 hours from exploratory data analysis to visualization and analysis. Most of the time was spent on understanding the data and calculating the approxiamte distances each bird traveled given longitude and latitude. Besides, I am super exited to try out the new feature of embedding viz in tooltip in Tableau 10.5! When you hover on the bars on the right chart, you can see where this bird actually traveled in the time period you specified. (You may need to open the fullscreen mode of this dashboard to see the map in the tooltip normally…).
Below is my dashboard:

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Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

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Interesting findings

• From 2003 to 2013, among the 16 birds tagged, there are five clear migration routes, three in North America (along the west coast, east coast, and in the middle) and two in South America. In the first half of the year (summer half), these birds fly north, and in the second half (winter half), they fly south.
• There is a correlation that heavier birds travel shorter. It could be either they are too heavy to travel far, or they travel too little so they are fat :).

Follow this link to find more weekly vizzes :)