Backyard Birders Do Citizen Science

Project FeederWatch lets birders participate in a citizenscience survey without leaving their back yards.

Run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N. Y., and Bird Studies Canada, a nonprofit research group in Ontario, the project involves about 15,000 volunteers across the continent who make lists of all the birds that show up at their backyard feeders from November to early April. The collaboration began about 20 years ago, when Erica Dunn, an ornithologist who started the Ontario Bird Feeder Survey in 1976, realized that a larger survey would be better able to track population and migration trends. She approached the Cornell Lab about starting a similar study in the United States, and their joint effort enrolled 4,000 volunteers in 1987, its first year.

Project FeederWatch is a great way to learn about birds, with the support of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and countless other birders, accessible by e-mail. A $ 15 fee includes instructions, a handbook about birds and bird feeding, a poster with color illustrations of common feeder birds, a calendar, data forms and return envelopes. Records can also be submitted online.
More information is at www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw.

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BY ANNE RAVER NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE