Download slide 1 - Cornell Lab of Ornithology

SLIDE 1 – Intro Slide
Thank you for joining us as we present NestWatch, a project developed by the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology in collaboration with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, and
funded by the National Science Foundation.
SLIDE 2 – Why Study Birds?
What is it about birds that has allowed this connection with scientists, conservationists
and ordinary citizens? They are found in nearly every habitat on every continent, they
are part of many ecological processes, they are sensitive to environmental fluctuations,
and they are incredibly accessible by professionals and amateurs alike. Unfortunately,
many species are declining and there are gaps in our knowledge about bird conservation
and bird populations which necessitate that we expand our suite of monitoring programs,
especially to areas historically off limits to scientists.
SLIDE 3 – Private Land Challenge
As natural landscapes continue to decrease, birds will continue to nest in human modified
habitats such as backyards, farms, golf courses, and roadways. Surprisingly, little is
known about how birds use human modified landscapes and what affect these landscapes
have on nesting success. More surprisingly is the fact that nearly 75% of threatened and
endangered birds occur on private property. Nearly three quarters of all forests in the US
are also privately owned. In Texas for example, about 95% of the land in the hands of
property owners. This is clearly not good news for scientists who would like to have
access to private property. Given these daunting circumstances for scientists, an
alternative is required.
SLIDE 4 – Citizen Science to the Rescue!
The Lab of Ornithology didn’t invent Citizen Science but they have certainly pioneered
much of the field. There are many different models of citizen science but the Cornell
model of is basically the organized engagement of the public in genuine scientific and
professional research. We provide projects that we hope will appeal to bird and nature
enthusiasts & engage them in helping us answer important questions at a scale that no
single researcher could attempt to do in a lifetime. These projects are also meant to
promote environmental awareness and scientific literacy.
SLIDE 5 – What is NestWatch?
NestWatch is a citizen science project that gathers data on of ALL North America’s
breeding birds in order to track their nesting success.
Goals of NestWatch include:
1.
Teach people about nesting biology and how to effectively monitor nests
2.
Engage the public in data collection and gather long-term, baseline breeding data
on common and rare birds
3.
Study nesting success and how breeding factors vary across time and space, to
inform research questions & conservation strategies.
4.
Increase appreciation for the natural world and promote environmental
stewardship that benefits birds.
SLIDE 6 – Large-scale Questions
The most powerful thing about Citizen Science is its ability to collect data and answer
questions across very large scales, both in time and space. Acting as the eyes and ears of
scientists, our network of volunteers can help us answer important questions about the
factors that limit breeding success. These factors include things like predation, land use
changes, and cowbirds. These factors probably have different impacts across the ruralsuburban-urban landscape gradient. BTW, the picture in the lower left is of a black rat
snake eating a one-month old barn owl chick while its five siblings look on. The box was
suspended about 20 feet high, which gives you a good idea of the formidable predators
that snakes are.
SLIDE 7 – Volunteer Network
Our volunteer network is targeted to three groups whose involvement and skill level are
extremely varied. They include backyard birders or those that are completely new to nest
monitoring. We have a large number of participants that monitor nest-box trails of up to
500 boxes. We have a small but growing number of professionals and land managers who
are monitoring nests on public lands. I will illustrate how each of these segments of our
volunteer network can contribute meaningful data to our database and help achieve the
ultimate goal of conserving breeding birds.
SLIDE 8 – Backyard Birders
To help answer these kinds of questions we selected 25 focal species of birds that are
very accessible to backyard birders. These species were chosen because of their tendency
to nest across the urban-suburban-rural gradient. The group in the middle is found all
across North America, those on the left are mostly western species and those on the right
are mostly eastern species. As you can see they are all very common birds and they often
nest very close to humans, making them easily accessible for nest monitoring.
Focal Species include: American Goldfinch, American Robin, Barn Swallow, Blackcapped Chickadee, Brown-headed Cowbird, House Finch, House Wren, Mourning Dove,
Northern Mockingbird, Song Sparrow, Tree Swallow, Red-winged Blackbird, Blue Jay,
Carolina Chickadee, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Phoebe, Gray Catbird, Northern Cardinal,
Lesser Goldfinch, Mountain Bluebird, Say’s Phoebe, Violet-green Swallow, Western
Bluebird, Western Scrub Jay
SLIDE 9 – Nest-box Monitors
For nearly 4 decades the Eastern Bluebird has been the poster child of successful nestbox monitoring programs leading to real increases in population numbers as we can see
from both the BBS map and graph. But there are lots of other cavity-nesting birds who
could use the same kind of proactive conservation efforts. These birds listed here all
show significant declines, and with the exception of the woodpeckers, will readily nest in
boxes. So nest box monitors can play an important role in providing nesting sites for
species in where this may be a limiting factor for successful nesting.
SLIDE 10 – Land Managers
And finally, the third group that will play a significant role in breeding bird conservation
are the land mangers and seasoned nest monitors, most of whom work in public lands.
Many of these “veterans” have submitted data to Cornell’s Nest Record Card program
which began in 1965. Because these cards go back in time and include nearly 600
species, they are critically important to answering questions about birds and global
climate change. Eventually all of these cards will become part of NestWatch, making it
the largest database of its kind in North America. The data will be available to the general
public as well as to scientists studying the effect of global climate change on nesting
birds.
SLIDE 11 – Global Climate Change
Whether you are a backyard birder, a nest-box monitor, or a professional biologist,
current nest observations are needed to compare against the historic data to understand
how birds will respond to climate change. We already anticipate that laying dates will
advance and happen earlier than average. Optimal clutch sizes may change to adapt to
changing temperatures. There will likely be a mismatch between peek nestling food
demand and food availability. And, we have data showing that in warmer climates,
hatching failure is much more prevalent. In order to track nesting success as a function of
climate change it is crucial that we continue to monitor bird’s reproductive success
through projects like NestWatch.
SLIDE 12 – How to NestWatch
Okay, so I’d like to spend the second half of this presentation talking about how to
participate in NW. It doesn’t take much effort to become a nest monitor with NestWatch.
You can choose to monitor one nest or 100, it’s up to you! Here then are the steps for
participating in NestWatch, which I will go through, one at a time.
1. Sign up online and learn about birds’ nesting cycles
2. Get certified to monitor nests
3. Provide nest boxes or find open cup nests
4. Visit active nests and record what you see in the nest during each visit
5. Submit your data online via “My Nests”
6. Explore data anytime
You can also download the entire NestWatch Monitoring Manual from our web site.
SLIDE 13 – Create Account at www.nestwatch.org
Signing up online is free and easy! If you have previously participated in any Lab of
Ornithology project, you can use the same user name and password. If not, simply fill out
the contact information to register and create a new account. Participants receive all of
their information through the NestWatch web site. The web site seen here will provide a
place for people to read & download instructions, data sheets, the Code of Conduct and
the nest monitoring protocol. Internet visitors will also find loads of nest monitoring
resources, learn about our focal species, get help, enter and retrieve data, and take part in
fun stuff like quizzes and forums.
SLIDE 14 – Get Certified
To help minimize disturbance to birds and their nests, we ask participants to become
certified to monitor nests. To do this, they must score a 100% on a quiz which is based
completely on the NW Code of Conduct for nest monitoring. The Code of Conduct
describes how to monitor nests to avoid harming birds.
SLIDE 15 – Find Active Nests
As I mentioned earlier, little is known about how birds use human modified landscapes
and what affect these landscapes have on nesting success. Here are some tips for finding
nests.
Nest boxes work great in yards, and they are a great way to get started with nest
monitoring. Many open cup birds also return to the same area to nest (especially if
nesting was successful) year after year. So, searching for old nests in the fall when the
leaves are gone is a great way to find out if birds nested in your area the previous season.
Also, look for clumps of vegetation in trees and bushes and try to discern if they are
actually bird’s nests. However, the best way to find nest is to watch the birds themselves
and pick out their behavioral cues.
SLIDE 16 – Behavioral Cues
In their attempt to communicate with one another or simply provide food to their young,
birds often give themselves away depending on the phase of the nesting cycle they are in.
Watch the birds and try to follow them from a distance to see if you can find the nest.
Patience and good observation skills will go a long way toward finding nests.
For example, during:
 Courtship – listen for males singing; look for copulation, nudging, food offering,
crouching, preening, and flight displays.
 Nest building - both sexes may make frequent visits to the nest, lots of mate
guarding also occurs.
 Egg laying – Female songbirds typically only visit the nest once or twice a day
during egg laying, leaving very few clues for observers to find nests.
 Incubation – The female spends a lot of time on and off the nest foraging, and
calling to the male.
 Nestling – There are many obvious clues during this time since parents are
making frequent trips to the nest to feed young and remove fecal sacs, also listen
to the high pitched squeaks from begging young.
SLIDE 17– Monitor Nests and Collect Data
Once certified, participants an begin collecting data for each nest they monitor.
Intelligent planning of nest checks makes daily visits unnecessary. The NestWatch
protocol provides guidelines for the best times to monitor nests so that we can obtain the
most useful data from our participants without causing unnecessary disturbance to the
birds. Although it may be tempting to visit nests more often than suggested, please try to
keep disturbances to the nesting area to a minimum.



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We recommend 8–10 nest visits spread out over the course of the nesting attempt.
As a general rule, if you check nests every 4-5 days, you will be closely following
the protocol. Nest building (1 visit)
 Egg laying period (1-2 visits).
 Incubation period (2 visits)
 Hatching period (1 visit)
 Nestling period (2 visits)
 Fledging period (1 visit)
 Post-fledging period (1 visit)
This protocol applies whether you are monitoring nest boxes or nests in natural
vegetation.
If you can’t follow the protocol exactly, do your best to visit nests at least once in the
beginning, once in the middle and once at the end of each nest attempt.
Remember, nest checks should only last a few minutes, tops.
SLIDE 18– Multiple Nest Visits Data
There are three vital pieces of information we need to make data analysis meaningful.
 Location information (street address, latitude/longitude, online you can use our
mapping tool)
 Habitat and nest site characteristics.
 Breeding data – This includes information about the number of eggs or clutch size,
and number of young each time you visit the nest. Other pertinent information
describes the status of the nest, any observed adult activity, the development of the
young, any management activity you did (this applies mostly to nest boxes) and
cowbird evidence, if any.
 Participants can also provide a quick summary of the entire nesting attempt. The
summary information can then be downloaded as Excel or .PDF files.
SLIDE 19 – Enter Data via “My Nests”
The online data entry has been developed to mimic the paper forms for seamless data
entry.
 After logging in, users can “register” their nest sites. This simply means telling us
the location of the nest site. The NestWatch database uses the latest goggle maps
features, but there are three other ways that users can locate a nest including by
street address, using an existing nest location, or typing in the lat/long.
 After sites are located, the nest step is to the describe nest site. We need to know
what kind of surface or substrate the nest is in, on, or under. This is the only
required field in this step. But we would also like to know about the habitat, the
nest height, and for cavities, the orientation and entry hole width. These are not
required but the more information you can provide the better.
 Lastly, participants can use the interactive grid to enter information about each
visit they made to the nest. Data can be entered a little at a time throughout the
season, or all at once at the end of the season.
SLIDE 20 – See Your Personal Data
Personal data can be downloaded into Excel files or as .PDF files. Excel files are great to
have to conduct analyses of your own data. PDF files provide a clean paper copy you’re
your records and can be easily included in electronic documents or newsletters.
SLIDE 21 – Explore Public Data
We can use the Google Maps tools to discover all the species other participants are
reporting from their backyard or neighborhood trail. In addition, we can see for each
species, the total number of eggs laid, number of nestlings and number of birds that
fledged for each species.
What if we want to compare breeding information across different areas? The mapping
tools let us compare things like first egg dates, clutch size, and hatching failure across
states or within 100km grids. What we are seeing here is the average clutch sizes for
Eastern Bluebirds by state. Notice the gradual increase in clutch sizes as you move from
south to north. This gradual increase in clutch size has been well documented by data
collected from citizens.
SLIDE 22 – NestWatch broad impacts
Before I conclude, I’d like to summarize some of the benefits that participating in
NestWatch can generate for you, for science, and for the birds.
 A promise to store your data permanently
 Monitors contribute to science in lasting ways while increasing their knowledge
of and appreciation for birds.
 Permanent archived dataset
 Scientists gain ability to track important problems at meaningful scales across the
continent.
 An informed and active public willing to act as stewards of the environment they
share with birds.
SLIDE 23 – Virtual Nest Monitoring
We realize however, that sometimes circumstances make if difficult to find or monitor
real nests, but we want you to know about our virtual Nest Cams. If access to real nests is
not possible, Internet visitors can still enjoy and even monitor nesting birds through our
extremely popular online NestCams. These cameras, placed near nests, send real-time
images of birds throughout their nesting cycle to our web site. Starting in 2008, we will
launch CamClickr, a completely online citizen science project that uses our extensive
archive of cam images to engage volunteers in sorting and tagging animal behaviors.
This online network of "behavioral scientists" will help us answer interesting questions
about breeding behavior that couldn’t be answered without this view of life in the nest.
SLIDE 24 – Online Resources
For more information on NestWatch, our sister project the NestCams, or the Lab of
Ornithology, please write, call or visit our web sites.
SLIDE 25 –Thank you