Lilly Briggs, a graduate student at York University in Toronto, has a strong interest in migratory birds and international education.  About a year ago, she needed to find a suitable research project to complete her Masters degree. Her ideal was to reach Costa Rican students with the message of bird conservation. When she heard of BirdSleuth from a collegue who was successfully using the curriculum in Toronto, she wondered if it might work in Latin America.

These Costa Rican students are looking for birds.

When Lilly contacted BirdSleuth staff to describe her interest, we were intrigued!  eBird had been recently expanded into Costa Rica, and we had a number of potentially interested partners.  Together, Lilly and Lab staff drafted a modified and condesed version of the BirdSleuth: Most Wanted Birds module and translated it into Spanish. With the help of a generous donation of Pocket Naturalist Guides of Costa Rican birds from Waterford Press (which would help the students identify birds and submit their data to eBird), the BirdSleuth—Costa Rica module was born!

Lilly travelled to Costa Rica in the spring of 2009 to field-test the new resource in the Sarapiqui region of the country. Through classroom observations and feedback, she found that both students and teachers greatly enjoyed becoming “Detectives de Pájaros” (“bird detectives”)!  As one student said, "It was a lot of fun to go outside and watch birds and learn more about them. I want to do more bird walks!"  A teacher told Lilly, "It was wonderful to see the students learn to appreciate all these amazing birds they have in their own backyard."

We hope that the success of the field test, combined with a growing network of partner schools and non-governmental organizations in Costa Rica, will help us expand our citizen science and education programs in Latin America. In addition, our efforts serve as inspiration for exploring new international collaboration opportunities for our North American BirdSleuth teachers and the possibility of future bilingual BirdSleuth resources.  We'll continue to seek funding (and amazing partners like Lilly) who will help us make BirdSleuth useful to our friends here and abroad!