More Citizen Science Opportunities

Citizen Science projects are vastly increasing the amount of data that can be recorded across the country. More eyes means more observations of plants and animals, their occurrence, migrations, species interactions and behavior.

I am a long time participant of Cornell University's Project FeederWatch. Once a week from November to April, over a two day period, I count birds in my yard for FeederWatch. When I started to watch and document, I started to really see what species were living in my yard, who was coming for dinner, and which species migrated through. I began to really watch behavior. More on FeederWatch.



Now FeederWatch has an additional project looking at the gender balance of certain species at the feeders. Are male house finches keeping the females away?

It will be interesting to see what the data reveals. At the moment, I'm realizing that at my feeders, there does seem to be a pattern of like sexes feeding together. I never really noticed that before.

If you counted birds for Great Backyard Bird Count, you might enjoy Project FeederWatch too. It is a great way for families to participate in active science together.