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 rural-suburban-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, Black-capped Chickadee, Brown-headedCowbird, 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, LesserGoldfinch, Mountain Bluebird, Say’s Phoebe, Violet-green Swallow, Western Bluebird, WesternScrubJay
SLIDE 9 – Nest-box Monitors
For nearly 4 decades the Eastern Bluebird has been the poster child of successful nest-box 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.
· 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)
Ø Egg laying period (1-2 visits).
Ø Incubation period (2 visits)
Ø Hatching period (1 visit)
Ø Nestling period (2 visits)
Ø Fledging period (1 visit)
Ø 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.