If you’re like me, you love watching the birds at your backyard bird feeder on a fall or winter day. Getting to know what kinds of birds regularly come is fun, and I find myself wondering about new birds that occasionally appear and what has happened when regulars disappear. As it turns out, scientists wonder the same things.
Every winter thousands of volunteers across North America become citizen scientists and participate in a winter-long survey of feeder birds in their backyards, at nature centers, and in community areas. FeederWatch was founded in Ontario, Canada in 1976. The goal was to create an annual survey of winter feeder birds across North America. To reach this goal, in the 1980’s the Cornell Lab of Ornithology joined Bird Studies Canada to run Project FeederWatch. Today the survey stands apart from other such monitoring programs because of the detailed data it provides to scientists on the distribution and abundance of feeder birds across North America.
If you are interested in helping scientists better understand feeder birds’ behavior during the winter, or just want to find out more about Project FeederWatch visit https://feederwatch.org/
The 2024 Project FeederWatch starts on November 1st and runs until April 30th, 2025.
COMING FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Christmas Bird Count 2024, December 14th through January 5th. The Olympia CBC will be Sunday, December 15th, and the Lewis County CBC will be Saturday, December 21st. More details coming soon.
Tom Reynolds
