Birds Span the Hemisphere: Now Citizen Science Does Too

New project calls for sightings from throughout the range of migratory birds

Citizen science is taking a bold step forward at the Lab, spanning the Americas with the new Focal Species Monitoring Program. The program asks citizen-science participants to send data on certain migratory birds from anywhere within the species' range. The resulting data from the entire length of a migrant's journey will create a more holistic view of their lives—from North American breeding grounds to Central and South American wintering grounds. Anyone who lives in or travels to the Americas can contribute data online year-round.

"I think it's really important that we're finally linking studies of both breeding and wintering habitats," says project coordinator Sara Barker. "It has been piecemeal, but now we're pulling it all together with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other partners actually doing on-the-ground habitat work in Central and South America."

The program is the brainchild of international committees for the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group (Alianza Alas Doradas) and the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group (El Grupo Cerlúleo). The Lab's Information Science team is creating the online tools to make it possible.

Priority Migrant Monitoring Project

The Focal Species Monitoring Program is the umbrella for two monitoring projects. The Priority Migrant Monitoring Project focuses on five species whose populations are plummeting: Blue-winged Warbler, Canada Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, Golden-winged Warbler, and Olive-sided Flycatcher. Participants will gather baseline data on where these birds are located, especially in Central and South America. The working groups will use the data in conservation planning with the help of models to predict where habitat will need to be protected in the future. The Priority Migrant Monitoring Project was modeled after eBird, www.ebird.org, a project that enables participants to report North American bird sightings online. In addition to reporting bird counts at the Priority Migrant Monitoring Project web site www.ebird.org/primig, participants can record habitat features, as well as the age and sex of the birds they see.

William Dilger Canada Warbler A colorful, active warbler of northern forests, the Canada Warbler spends little time on its breeding grounds. It is one of the last warblers to arrive north in the spring and one of the first to leave in the fall. Summer Range: Canada from eastern British Columbia to Nova Scotia, southward to eastern Minnesota, northern Michigan, and Connecticut, and farther southward in mountains to northern Georgia. Winter Range: Northern South America. Population estimate: 1,400,000 Trend: Decreased by 15-50 percent in past 30 years* Goal: Increase by 50 percent* *Population estimates and 30-year trends and goals are based on the Partners in Flight North American Landbird Conservation Plan.

Painted Bunting by Bill Horn
www.birdsofoklahoma.net

Painted Bunting Monitoring Project

The second component of the program is the Painted Bunting Monitoring Project, to be launched later this year. Scientists estimate that approximately 4.5 million Painted Buntings exist in the wild, but the number has been declining since 1965. The declines have probably been caused by the loss of habitat and exacerbated by both legal and illegal trade in buntings as caged birds.

Collecting information on migrants across the entire hemisphere may help put the brakes on declining populations before they crash. "These declines could be due to what's happening on their wintering grounds, so we really need to get a handle on that," Barker notes. "There are plenty of birders who travel to those regions, so I'm hoping that Lab members and citizen-science participants will get excited about this. Now there's something they can do for conservation in all of the Americas."

—Pat Leonard

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu