Watching a bird’s nest is a fascinating experience. Nest building is intricate and a delight to watch. Baby birds grow shockingly fast…suddenly, they’re as big as adult birds and taking their first flights.

If you’re fortunate enough to be watching a nest this season, consider joining Nest Watch. Formerly known as the “Birdhouse Network”, this project by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a new name and a fresh new web site. The name better reflects the project, as you can report data for any nests, not just those you might have active in birdhouses. And all the great resources of the former Birdhouse Network are still available at the new Nestwatcher’s Resource Center.

If you’ve never considered nest watching, I encourage you to try it. I’ve monitored nest boxes and raptor nests, and it’s an incredibly rewarding experience.

You’ve read the news stories about the sudden declines in bee populations in the United States; the status of these important pollinators should be of interest to anyone who’s interested in…well, eating!

The Great Sunflower Project seeks to learn about the status of bees, and asks you to watch and record bees that visit sunflowers grown from specific wild sunflowers. From the FAQ:

As soon as you create an account, we will send you free sunflower seeds. These are wild, native sunflowers (Helianthus annuus). These sunflowers can be grown in a pot on a deck or patio or in a garden. Click here for some advice on growing. If you are able to get your own seeds and want to send us data, please use the wild sunflower. We found ours at American Meadows. That ensures that we will be comparing apples to apples!

The project is the brainchild of Gretchen LeBuhn, associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University. The San Francisco Examiner did a 3-Minute Interview with LeBuhn about the project last month.

Kevin Kelly’s recent post, A Web Page For Every Species, is part back-story and part forecast. It tells the story of the All Species Inventory, and it predicts some exciting techniques for citizen scientists to use in their own backyards.

I’m really glad to hear the story of the All Species Inventory; I was intrigued by it a couple of years ago, but had a hard time finding information about it. It turns out that the foundation ran out of money during the “dot-bust”, but important seeds had been planted. The past two years have seen some happy developments, as Kelly describes:

Completing a circle, at the 2007 TED, seven years after that dinner, Ed Wilson won the TED Wish. His wish was to have the TED attendees and the public at large help him produce the first real Encyclopedia of Life. He wrote a letter to the MacArthur Foundation, who responding with the first funding for this project. Recently, the taxonomists who never gave up on the idea of All Species, like Terry Erwin, Christian Samper, Peter Raven, to name a few close to us, created a broad consortium of university and natural history museums to fund and curate the Encyclopedia of Life, with a web page for every species.

Last month, at February 2008 TED, eight years later, the consortium launched the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). Ed’s wish (and mine) fulfilled so to speak. The first 30,000 species got their active web pages. Another 1 million species got blank pages, with only their names filled in. In other words, the EOL is still mostly blank — but real.

The Encyclopedia of Life is an amazing project, but it’s not enough. Kelly sets forth both the reasons and the vision for continuing the All Species Inventory, with the help of citizen scientists and technology worthy of a Star Trek episode:

The solution is new technology. The most potent force in taxonomy is genetic sequencing, since every species has a unique gene pattern. What we all want is a nifty handheld tricorder that reads the genes and can tell you what species you are holding.

and

I know from my own experience that anyone who can tell the difference between two types of lettuce can learn the differences in species — if you have a learning feedback. The instant feedback of a Species ID’er will educate millions of backyard taxonomists in record time. With the device in their backpack they will fan out from their own neighborhoods into the rest of the world, joining up with local naturalists to fill in the gaps in the EOL. With the enabling power of a taxonomic calculator, taxonomy will become a mainstream pursuit.

These are just brief snippets of a thoughtful essay that anyone interested in citizen science should read: A Web Page For Every Species.

Tina Phillips of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sent out this timely reminder about the Great Backyard Bird Count:

This is just a quick reminder that the 11th annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up this Friday through Monday, February 15-18. There seems to be a lot of “buzz” about it this year, both in the media and among groups that are planning special events around the count. We’re hoping to top last year’s record-breaking event where participants submitted more than 81,000 checklists!

It’s a chance to do some bird-counting, even though the nesting season is still some weeks away. Just watch for 15 minutes or more during one or more days of the count, and enter the highest number of each species seen at any one time on the GBBC site: www.birdcount.org. NestWatchers in northern states may see greater numbers of winter finches during this irruption year. We’re always wondering what new states and provinces will report the rapidly-expanding Eurasian Collared-Dove or what birds may be lingering farther north than their typical ranges.

We hope you’ll reach out to your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers by forwarding this email to them or personally inviting them to “Count for Fun, Count for the Future!” in the 2008 Great Backyard Bird Count.

It’s a great chance to start that backyard bird list if you don’t already have one, and and comparing your results from year to year is always interesting!

Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) is an organization at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which engages in citizen science watershed monitoring AND helps other groups start their own programs.

Their monitoring of Pennsylvania waterways resulted in detailed databases on pH and alkalinity in Pennsylvania streams. They’ve also created watershed atlases depicting land use, population density, and other data about each region.

But some of the most exciting work by ALLARM might be the work of their Technical Support Center:

ALLARM’s Technical Support Center (TSC) works in cooperation with volunteer stream monitoring groups to identify watershed problems and provide avenues for monitoring and data analysis. Through an integrated series of workshops, the TSC helps watershed groups meet their monitoring goals by providing assistance during all stages of program development and implementation. We also use our Community Aquatic Research Laboratory (CARL) to provide specific technical assistance.

By providing this assistance, ALLARM helps local groups organize their own monitoring efforts. This is terrific work and serves a need that’s sharply felt in small communities who would like to do monitoring, but need help with training and organizing their efforts.

Great video report from Adam Rogers and Wired Science about the impotent chemistry sets being sold today and the glorious ones of the past.

This was being sent around the office at work as our excitement there grows about the upcoming Maker Media book, Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments.

I can’t for the life of me think of any citizen science projects in the realm of chemistry. Can you? If not, does it point us in any direction towards a more universal definition of “citizen science”?

I’ve written about my first experience on the Point Reyes Christmas Bird Count (CBC), a count that I’ve participated in for four years, including this year. I love the wild, human-abandoned area that we travel through on that count. So I was a little disheartened on Friday morning when I met up with the crew for another count, Sonoma Valley CBC, and learned that I’d be covering territory that was mostly urban, in Petaluma:

It figured; I’d pressed to be assigned to the Adobe Road Area, known for raptors like Ferruginous Hawks and Golden Eagles, but I hadn’t noticed the urban areas of Petaluma in the southwest portion of that territory. That section was given to Ellen to lead, and I was her lone teammate. I don’t think Ellen was excited about doing this area, and since I’d responded to rapid-fire questions about my experience by blurting out “I don’t do gulls” (when what I really meant “I’m terrible at gull identification but I’m trying to learn), I don’t think she was excited about having me as a teammate, either.

We headed first to Lucchesi Park, a park across from a strip mall with a disgusting cement pond full of (yes) gulls. I’ve been here for birding class when park workers were raking out the pond of unspeakable things, including gull carcasses. There’s a floating dock in the center of the pond that’s pretty much covered by dead gulls, other gulls picking at their bodies. It’s the best place in Petaluma to go for gull identification (with the Petaluma Poultry processing plant being a close second). There are also a variety of ducks, including a demented Wood Duck who gives our species count a little boost.

Thankfully, we had the combined help of two teams to cover Lucchesi Park, but we didn’t find the Glaucous Gull, a rarity we’d hoped to be able to add to the count. When we’d counted the gulls and ducks, we split up. Ellen and I headed for the golf course to see how far we could get before being thrown out.

We actually did as much of the golf course as we wanted without any trouble, and continued to bird the more suburban part of our territory, trespassing on a pumpkin patch/Halloween farm and the mysterious Science of The Soul Study Center. I marked our checklist as we worked, and it wasn’t long until I was appreciating the fact that I’d been teamed up with Ellen. She was a lot of fun to work with, and we got along great.

Ellen happened to live within our count area and she invited me into her home for our lunch break — a very posh lunch break for a CBC, with freshly-brewed tea and a real restroom, amenities that I haven’t had on a count before. We got a nice number of birds walking around her neighborhood, including a brilliant Cooper’s Hawk…probably the reason we were being passed by groups of small passerines vacating that corner.

After lunch we worked through other parts of our assignment. Not expecting to find much in these areas, we were thrilled with every new species we found. We birded along fenced-off creeks containting partially-submerged shopping carts, through alleys with groups of men smoking and saying hello these odd women with binoculars (maybe it’s good that I don’t have those Swarovski EL’s hanging around my neck?) and found Snowy Egrets. Further along, a Kingfisher blasted out and flew around calling,m angry with us invading his area as if he’d never seen humans on foot here before. On one street we counted flocks of Cedar Waxwings and Western Bluebirds, leading Ellen to muse, “I’d like to find a Merlin!” just before we turned a corner where she noticed a small dark falcon in a treetop. Sure enough, it was a Merlin (high five!), and he put on quite a show…being harassed by a crow, he’d dive off the tree after it in a stunning chase display of aerial prowess, only to land back onto the treetop (in the scope’s field of view) when the crow had been driven off, only and repeat the scene over again a few times for us. We drove through the Safeway parking lot, counting pigeons and blackbirds and gulls (but still no Glaucous Gull), and laughed that we were birding this way, me counting pigeons as Ellen dodged shoppers. We surveyed along an urban trail that passed under 101, cars whizzing noisily overhead as we tried to listen for warblers and chickadees. Ellen spotted something in the undergrowth and hurried to get me on the bird — an Orange-crowned Warbler, a fantastic bird for us to find, a life bird for me.

We ended by going back to the pond at Lucchesi Park to try one more time for the Glaucous Gull by scanning the gulls standing on the pavement for anything with white wingtips…great practice for me in gull identification, and I was grateful to have something so specific to study. As I relaxed into the methodical examination of each standing bird, the gulls thwarted my efforts and noisily took to the air and wheeled around. Ellen pointed and called, “Peregrine Falcon!” Sure enough, and it looked like she was heading straight over to the Safeway parking lot for her own survey, and she went ont oour data sheet as our 70th species and final bird of the day.

We ended back at the Starbucks across the street where we started. The other teams were already there. Having worked the back roads of Sonoma Mountain, they’d found some excellent raptors, but complained of the fog that had obscured their view and the species they’d missed. As they talked about their day, I smiled about ours, about how much fun we’d had in our funny little urban territory where we weren’t expected to find anything interesting.

The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) is a weather project that’s unique. Using low-tech data collection methods instead of of high-priced weather stations, CoCoRaHS collects and shares important precipitation data.

To join CoCoRaHS, you just need to get a high capacity 4” diameter rain gauge and sing up on their web site to report data. Training can be done online. (The rain gauge can be used to measure precipitation due to snowfall, which is impossible with most automated weather stations…it’s not only cheaper than a weather station, but for this study, it’s better!)

I find the method of measuring hail with a “hail pad” particularly intriguing. Hail pads are pieces of styrofoam covered in aluminum foil. Placed on the ground in a hail storm, the impressions made by the hail provide a way of measuring the size of individual pieces. Instructions for making a hail pad are freely available on the site.

Be sure to check out the CoCoRaHS weblog for an interesting perspective on national weather and citizen science!

Here’s a new discussion group for citizen science practitioners and organizers alike. I’m hoping it will foster communication between all the various types of individuals: volunteers, administrators, and professional scientists. And I hope you’ll join and post your opinions, questions, and ideas!

NOTE: I wrote this after participating in my first Christmas Bird Count (CBC) in 2004; it appeared on another site I had at the time. Since it’s not available on the web anymore, I thought I’d repost it to this site.

If you’ve ever thought about participating in CBC, I encourage you to do so. Beginners are especially welcome, and it’s a wonder way to spend those short winter days, out in the field with teams of like-minded folks. It’s my favorite part of the holiday season.

Christmas Bird Count, December 18, 2004

On Saturday, I was a first-time participant in the largest citizen science project around: the venerable Christmas Bird Count. And I was lucky enough to do it with one of the top count circles in the country: the Point Reyes count circle, almost always one of the top 5 circles in the country for number of bird species reported.

The count circles are designated areas with a 15-mile radius. Each circle has its count on one day during December 14 through January 5 (as I found out later, lots of participants tend to count for more than one circle; a lot of people who counted on Saturday were also planning to count for another circle on Sunday). The circles are split into areas with their own teams. Each team counts all of the birds they identify in their area, records it on a data sheet, and then turns it in so that the data for the entire circle can be compiled.

I’ve been interested in seeing what the Christmas bird count was like, but felt my skills as a general birder were lacking and was uncertain about how to jump in. So when our hawk watch day leader mentioned that he was leading a team in the Point Reyes count and could use some help, I was happy to call it fate and jump in with both feet.

Our team had the “Tom’s Point” area — a slice of land on the edge of the Point Reyes circle, along the northeast edge of Tomales Bay. We met at 7 am near a bridge along Route One. Bob, our GGRO hawk watch day leader, had already been owling at something like 5:30 am. Also at bridge were Bruce, a very experienced birder, and Satchel, his grandson, in his early teens. The sun was just coming up, the birds just starting to sing, and all in all it was a beautiful frosty morning.

Near this bridge were a couple of residences, one evidently unoccupied. We birded cautiously around them, Bob sometimes calling out softly “good morning, good morning”…thankfully, no people appeared and we were able to record several species. I was grateful for the raptors that made appearances so I could feel useful!

I was impressed by how beautiful a Wrentit is. We saw one having such a great time feasting on a prickly pear, he didn’t really care that we were only a few feet away. We heard their call several times that day, but it didn’t compare to the close site of the little bird who is much prettier than his rendering in a field guide.

Birding goes high-tech

The compiler for the Point Reyes area had sent Bob email, “Find a RCSP and there’s rumors of an immature Bald Eagle around. Keep on the lookout. Also it’s warm so look for swallows and a gnatcatcher.” An “RCSP” is a Rufous-crowned sparrow, fairly uncommon, as are Bald Eagles, swallows, and gnatcatchers at this time of year. It was a tall order, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the challenge of it and spent the day scanning for anything remotely like a Bald Eagle.

In a sunny area near the bridge we noted several species of sparrows. (When you think of sparrows, you probably think of the ubiquitous and imported House Sparrow…the native ones are quite varied and beautiful, and I’ve been having a lot of fun watching and identifying them.) This was a good place to look for a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and Rufous-crowned Sparrow.

Our day leader was well-prepared. I saw him pull some device out and sounds started filling the air. It was an iPod, with small speaker from Radio Shack attached. The sounds of a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and a Rufous-crowned Sparrow filled the air, and we saw the motion of small birds coming to investigate.

At one point, the call of a Rufous-crowned sparrow was played, and an answering call rang out immediately, clearly directed at us. A small bird popped up on top of a nearby bush, and we all got close, gorgeous looks at his handsome figure, complete with reddish cap. Victory!

On to Tom’s Point

After the area along Route One, we drove to a larger part of our area, west of Tomales. We were lucky that most of our birding would be done on an Audubon Canyon Ranch preserve, so we mostly had full run of the place without other people and without worry that someone would be upset about our tramping around.

One of the most striking birds of the day for me was a Wilson’s Snipe. This marsh bird looks, to me, like a giant demented hummingbird flapping for its life when it flies. (Of course it’s not related to hummingbirds at all!)

We found we didn’t have the combination for the lock on the last gate at Tom’s Point, so we decided to hike. It was a really lovely day, and I was entertained by Red-tailed Hawks wheeling above us.

We rounded a corner and saw a beach along Tomales Bay, with hundreds of various shorebirds feasting on low-tide treats, thousands more beyond them in the bay, when it occurred to me: we were going to have count them!

It’s all about strategy

The reason we’d arrived at the shore during low tide was the same as the reason some teams had started at 4:00 am to go owling…behind the Christmas bird count is a game of strategy based on maximizing the number of birds counted.

I was grateful to learn that this systematic strategy meant that we didn’t have to pay too much attention to the amazing numbers of ducks, geese, cormorants, scoters and other water fowl that filled Tomales Bay. Three boats carried teams that would count those birds. The strategy of the count also meant that the team covering the territory next to ours would count the hundreds of gulls that passed over during the day.

Still, there were all the birds on the mud flats of the bay that we needed to count. I tried counting Godwits until I gave up in frustration. Pulling out my field guide, I realized how ill-prepared I was to deal with shorebirds in general. I couldn’t tell if all of the large-ish birds I saw were godwits or not. I’d count up to about 20 and then lose count, anxious over the number that were left and whether or not I was counting the right birds.

I think Bob saw my frustration, because he quickly gave me a different task: take his scope and count the Great Blue Herons on the shore east of us. This was manageable and easy (and fun — I’m happy to watch Great Blue Herons any time), and I came up with a count of 10 (now wondering if there were more). After this, I was considerably more calm and managed to get a count of 80 Godwits…which turned out to be fairly close to the mid-to-low-70’s counted by Bruce, Satchel, and Bob.

This has been a difficult thing for me: counting lots of birds at a time. Whether a kettle of hawks or a number of shore birds, I get anxious and unable to see a bird at a time. It’s a skill, among others, that I need to develop.

It was here also that Bob found a Redhead, a distinctive duck among the others in the bay. It took me a long time to be able to pick this bird out in the scope, but finally, with patience and a lot of self-reminders to look at one bird at a time (not to mention a lot of patience on the part of my teammates), I got it. I think we might have been the only team to report a Redhead during the count.

I really loved Tom’s Point. It is the epitome of everything I love about the Point Reyes area, even though it isn’t actually on Point Reyes proper. We looked across the bay to see Tule elk grazing contently, while we sorted out marsh and shorebirds. The terrain was varied and always beautiful. New lambs on an adjacent ranch provided lots of charming entertainment as they frisked about.

Well, it’s about the people, too

I really enjoyed spending the day with Bob, Bruce, and Satchel.

Satchel proved that teenagers have better eyes and ears throughout the day, and he added a lot of spirit to our team. Fearlessly he enjoyed sliding on the frosty bridge while I worried about slipping and falling, and he hopped up onto a fence post with all the agility of a Red-tailed Hawk while I flailed about pulling myself over the gate. I envied him his youthful interest in birding, which I’ve only developed in later life, and I was grateful that he was happy to share his knowledge and enthusiasm. I had a great time in a eucalyptus grove with him as he pointed out probable owl roosting spots, and in chasing (unsuccessfully) an owl we had flushed.

Bruce is obviously an accomplished birder, but esdnever snobbish about it and always happy to share information and tips. It wasn’t until later in the day when I realized that he’s actually the compiler for the Southern Marin count and an important person in the Audubon Canyon Ranch efforts. I really liked that he’d gotten his grandson involved with the count. At dinner he was able to point out several birding luminaries to me; a room full of birders you don’t know can seem intimidating, and I was grateful to be able to hang out with Bruce and Satchel at the dinner.

Bob has really helped Steve and me grow as hawk watchers over the last season, and he has really helped me grow as a general birder as well. He clearly gets huge enjoyment out of the birds we see, but he is also incredibly generous with views through his scope, his knowledge, his friendly manner, and great sense of humor. It can be a bit daunting to hang out with the birders when you don’t know a lot about it, so I really appreciate his encouragement.

We never did see a Bald Eagle or gnatcatcher — but we did see some tree swallows, who, along with the Rufous-crowned Sparrow and Redhead, were important in the count. And lots of more common-but-beautful birds, too.

Party Time

I almost didn’t stay for the group dinner after the count, but it had been on my mind to try to do the complete Christmas Bird Count experience, and I was glad I did.

Dinner was a catered, $8/per person affair. People cleaned up a little after a day in the field and arrived at the Point Reyes Cow Palace with bottle of wine and other beverages. A really delicious pasta dinner was served, and then the festivities started.

As dinner was being served, groups were sitting at tables trying to complete their tallies. People talked about the legendary count of two years ago, when a huge storm swung in over Point Reyes and either (1) blew in some great birds or (2) resulted in some of the most challenging birding weather ever, depending on who you talk to and what part of the day they’re talking about.

An introductory speech was give by count compiler, David Wimpfheimer. Then his partner, Susan Colletta, read from the list of birds for the area, and the group leaders called “Yes!” for any species seen for their group. At our table was the lively group from Inverness, and I liked how enthusiastic they were about their calls.

After the general count, each team was able to relay the highlights of the day. One of my favorites was a team that described seeing a bird trying to eat an eel, with the eel repeatedly scrabbling out of the birds gullet until it finally lost the battle. Another group had views of a Peregrine Falcon while a competing California Gray Whale vied for their attention. Our friends from the Inverness area visited a bird feeder repeatedly, four times throughout the day, until they were able to claim a Rose-breasted Grosbeak who had been hanging out in the area, being fed treats for a week to keep it in the area long enough for the count.

Dinner was a lot of fun. I was eager to get home, but I really enjoyed hanging out with a group of like-minded folks. One thing is for sure: you won’t find any of us in a shopping mall by choice during these short days of the year. The Christmas Bird Count gives some of us a great excuse to spend a day in the field, giving us a reason to do something we love and something that, as a citizen science project, I think really will matter.