Pool years in input file

[rbn]

Hi,

I have 15 years of bird ringing data. Some years i have data only of April, others of April and May and others I have data of April, May and June.

I'm interested in modelling the stopover duration during migration and the estimates of survival are the days spent in the stopover site. I have a low number of recaptures so I'd like to pool all years to get an overall estimate. There aren't captures/recaptures between years.

What is the best method of pool these data? Now I have an .inp file with 90 occasions (days corresponding to the three months) and put all the birds there.

Or is preferible to pool all years longitudinally in a line of 15x90 occasions?

Thanks in advance

David

[Jochen]

David,
if there are 0 recaptures in subsequent years I would take the .inp-file as it is and add year as an individual covariate - you might want to run a model with year as a covariate.
Good luck
Jochen