After Bio Blitz ended, I never thought I would be spending any more time bird watching. But for my Citizen Science Project I made the spontaneous decision to participate in a Birds Near Me project for Citizen Science. Birds Near Me is essentially a worldwide birding map created by a birder, Gerry Shaw. The map allows for people to zoom in and select any part of the world and view the different species and abundance of birds spotted daily. Birds Near Me is available to the public for free by downloading an app on your iPhone or tablet. The app gives you free access to the abundance and diversity of birds in regions around the world, shows pictures and descriptions of the birds sighted, highlights certain nearby bird “hotspots” for bird lovers to explore, and presents you with notable and unusual bird sightings near you. The Birds Near Me Project app is powered by the website eBird, where birders all around the world actually view and record the bird sightings found on Birds Near Me.
To participate in the Birds Near Me project for Citizen Science I had to create my own account on eBird in order to record my own findings. eBird has a number of projects available for both bird experts and beginners. I chose to participate in a specific project entitled My Yard eBird. This is a year round project where participants daily record the number of bird sightings in their own backyards and log them into the eBird database, for people to look up on Birds Near Me. I myself participated in this project for a week, and each day for half an hour identified and counted the number of birds I spotted my backyard. I created a log where I identified the abundance of birds I saw and the particular species of each bird spotted.
The task itself proved to be tedious at certain points, especially since there are fewer numbers of birds flying around Brooklyn backyards in late Autumn, than in the summer. Also, because of the season the birds I spotted were often of similar, native species. In fact, the majority of birds I spotted in my backyard were either Rock Pigeons or house sparrows, species of birds commonly found in Brooklyn since probably the founding of Brooklyn. However, there were interesting moments in this Citizen Science project. After days of seeing pigeons and sparrows, it was a pleasant surprise for me to spot certain bird species like the Blue Jay or Red Cardinal. I was even able to see a v-formation of geese flying above my garden on one occasion.
Although this Citizen Science project appears simple enough, the information gathered is actually of great importance to scientists. By having a clear understanding of the abundance and diversity of bird populations, scientists can thus determine the impact birds have on the environment, and on public health. For example, with a greater understanding of bird diversity, scientists like those we studied in class, were able to predict the effects of passerine and non-passerine bird species on diseases such as the West Nile Virus. In all, participating in a Citizen Science project showed how even the smallest contributions to a large scientific task can make a difference when unified.
Link to my eBird log: http://ebird.org/ebird/eBirdReports?cmd=subReport
