Birding Digitally During a Pandemic
For millions of people stuck indoors following the state-mandated “stay at home” order, life inside can quickly get boring. Binge-watching Netflix or playing online games only stays engaging for so long. Millions of people are learning how to work, learn, and teach from home—sharing their work spaces with family, or in many cases, self-isolating to protect their families. As Spring Migration ramps up, and many of the local birding areas remain closed to public access to slow the spread of COVID-19 birders are being faced with a new reality: birding from home.
There’s many choices of bird books to read while stuck at home inside.
Backyard birding is for many where it all started. For me, I began birding from my grandmother’s kitchen window, learning Cardinals and Blue Jays and learning the song of the White-throated Sparrows as Spring emerged from under the cold Vermont snow.
However, not everyone has a backyard to bird from. Many of us in urban areas rely on local parks, trails, open spaces, reservoirs, or natural areas to watch spring migration unfold. And now those areas are closed.
You’ve read all of your new bird books, gone through and edited all of the bird photos from your last birding trip, and now are beginning to wonder what there is for a birder to do. Is it safe to chase that county-level rarity that was just reported? Suddenly, your actions matter. Are you putting your family at risk to chase a bird? I can promise you, that you’re not alone in thinking these thoughts and navigating these changes. We’re all there with you.
Online can be a great place to connect with other birders. We are working on developing resources, exploring social tools, and creating content to keep you engaged, build community, and help connect one another during this time of need.
To help in this transition, I’ve put together a few suggestions of ways you can still engage with birds and the birding community digitally, no matter what your interest level might be. If you have some suggestions, feel free to comment or email thebirdingproject@gmail.com. We’d love to add to this list!
Support Citizen Science
Backyard birding has grown in popularity. In 1998, Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology partnered with the National Audubon Society to create the Great Backyard Bird Count. Each year, thousands of people count the birds they observe in their own backyards, and submit their sightings over a four-day period, providing scientists with a snapshot of bird populations across the globe. This past February, nearly 7,000 species were reported across the globe over a four-day period. That’s pretty incredible! This project, where citizens all follow the same protocols and share their observations is called citizen science-- and generates a data set that researchers, scientists, and students can use to analyze and study. Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology has since launched eBird, a free citizen science portal to report the birds you see anytime, anywhere. Their Merlin Bird ID app has helped bolster Cornell’s place at the cutting edge of using technology to identify and record birds from wherever you are.
Take the Leap! Create an eBird Account
Even if you don’t submit checklists, eBird is an awesome tool with many features to explore!
If you haven’t already, consider making an eBird account. Visit the link above, sign up, and start learning how to submit checklists. Consider downloading the eBird app, and submit a checklist from your own backyard. If you need help identifying a bird you see, download the Merlin app and follow the prompts to make an identification. You can even upload a photo! If you need help, just email thebirdingproject@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to identify it for you.
Travel Around the Country From Your Desk
Move over Fantasy Football, Fantasy Birding or “fanbirding” has become a real thing
Bird enthusiasts who can’t get outside IRL (In Real Life) have taken up Fantasy Birding. Similar to the fantasy sports we already know and love, fantasy birding follows real-time sightings recorded by birdwatchers who submit their observations from parks, yards, and wildlife refuges all over the world through Cornell University’s citizen science app eBird
Just like its athletic counterpart, Fantasy Birding users create an account and choose from a variety of games to play, including the “traditional” ABA Big Year, and a variety of Big Day games around the country. Feeling ambitious? It’s never too late to join the global Big Year. After joining a game, you select a birding location for each day, and enjoy watching real-time bird reports filter in throughout the day from the comfort of their own home. Each bird “sighting” is added to your list, and you can learn more about the birds reported, the locations you visit, and start planning that dream birding trip to Thailand you’ve been wanting to take. Disclaimer: with COVID-19 prohibiting travel and birding, the real-time results are much more limited and local to areas, but this just makes the game more challenging and exciting. (With many organized bird tours being cancelled this year, if anyone has tips on where to find Greater Sage-Grouse please let me know) Happy Birding!
Join New Facebook Groups
One new Facebook group that has popped up within the last two weeks (currently 1.9K members strong and growing) is #BirdTheFeckAtHome A play on the popular hashtag to keep people from venturing outside and spreading the coronavirus, this group is self-described as being “for Birders Self-isolating and Socially Distancing” to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19 “for the sake of an extra tick or another overrated photo…” With the goal to collectively amass 1,000 species from group members’ backyards in a shared online bird checklist, the group is well on its way--having already spotted more than 1,300 species globally. If you’re looking to join a global community of bird enthusiasts, or live somewhere cool with unique bird species you can add to the checklist, consider joining on Facebook. Just search “birdthefeckathome” in the search bar on Facebook.
Join the ABA
Support the American Birding Association through digital membership
The American Birding Association, or ABA is an organization all bird-lovers should support. A hub of resources ranging from bird identification, to free podcasts, to a digital and print magazine that covers all things birdwatching, the ABA is a resource unlike many others--a luxury that members have had for over 50 years! Like many nonprofits, the ABA is navigating the changing landscape due to COVID-19 and working to adapt and make changes during these times.
For a look at 5 Things Birders Can Do During the COVID-19 Crisis, click here:
ABA President Jeff Gordon recently shared a Facebook video encouraging building the birding community and fostering connection. “We really need you right now. Our revenue has really taken a hit. We have postponed events, advertisers and sponsors have had to regrettably pull back on their support... “ Jeff emphasized that these unforeseen factors make membership “triply important” and the ABA is incentivizing joining by offering membership discounts. If you are a lister, you should check out ABA’s new Listing Central 3.0 You can now add photos to your checklist, and easily import eBird checklists to arrive at your total ABA number that includes recent lumps and splits, and Hawaiian birds. I know what I’ll be doing next week…
The ABA has some great online content, and new ideas for content on the way. I suggest joining to see these new changes, and to support our own. If you’ve ever helped another birder get on a bird, lowered your scope for someone else to look through, or stopped to share birds with someone new to birding, this is no different. This is a way you can help the birding community at a time when we need you.
If you’d like to help the ABA, consider signing up, renewing your lapsed subscription, or giving a year’s subscription to a young birder who might love reading ABA’s outstanding Birding magazine. You know they’ll love it!
Use Code BIRDWELL2020 for a discounted membership.
Connect with Other Birders Digitally
Use technology to virtually connect with your birding friends, for a chat
Zoom is a video collaboration platform that people can use to teach online classes, run business meetings, host late-night television shows, or hold family game nights and social gatherings, all from the comfort of your living room. It’s free (to an extent) and can be easily downloaded and learned in a short amount of time.
Today I had a fantastic Zoom chat with six other birders from around the country. After birding alone for the last two weeks, it was refreshing to see and talk to my birding friends. We checked in with one another, talked about the positives of self-quarantine, and commiserated over the closing of many of our favorite birding hotspots close to home. We discussed how to properly self-distance while birding, and the ethics of posting about rare birds during a time when chasing across town or county lines might not be the best (or easiest) thing to do. Zoom is free to create an account, and you can host sessions with all of your friends, using video and audio and a chat feature. Now that I’ve learned some of the in’s and out’s of this software, I will definitely will be hosting more meetings with birders, and using it as a platform to teach and “virtually” bird with friends across the continent and the world during these next few uncertain months.
Review Your Bird Photos and Find Banded Birds
Do You Have Photos of A Banded Bird? it’S TIME TO REPORT IT!
If you’re like me, you’ve been using this extra time at home to go through past files of bird photos. Perhaps you’re cleaning out the out of focus shots, or maybe you’re viewing some photos for the first time on your computer. Like me, you might have photos of a banded bird. You might be wondering, what can you do with these photos?
According to the Bird Banding Laboratory, over the last 116 years, nearly 60 million birds have been banded across North America. Of these, nearly 4 million bands have been recovered and reported. Many of the band reports come from hunters who harvest waterfowl and migratory game birds, but more and more of these reports are being submitted by birdwatchers and photographers who can photograph the bands, without having to capture or stress the bird! Advances in digital camera technology has made it possible to photograph tiny songbirds and recover band data, helping to gain a better understanding of birds without killing them.
These reports are an important tool that help researchers study the movement, survival, and behavior of birds. This data helps scientists monitor populations, set hunting regulations, as well as lower hazards at airports keeping planes and birds safe. Banding studies done by partner organizations also support international conservation partners, including Partners in Flight and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan
Although this isn’t my best photo of a Bristle-thighed Curlew, it’s enough to read the tarsal flag (leg band) to submit the data to the Bird Banding Laboratory.
This week alone I’ve sorted through thousands of photos, from geese gracing the Hawaiian islands to ravens in Yellowstone and avocets in Arizona. So far, I’ve come across nearly a dozen photos of different species all sporting “jewelry” (a term hunters use to reference banded birds) These birds might have an aluminum leg band, with a series of numbers and letters stamped on it, or have a color band, neck collar, tarsal flag, wing tag, or other marker (even spray paint!)
HOW TO REPORT BANDED BIRDS
Visit USGS Bird Banding Laboratory Home Page: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/pwrc/science/bird-banding-laboratory?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
Click ‘Report a Band’ or visit https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/bblretrv/
Follow prompts
When finished, you’ll receive a certificate with the data about the bird you reported. It’s fascinating to see when and where they were captured and banded, and where they have been since!
I save and print these certificates and keep them in a binder with photos of the birds I’ve reported over the years. It can be a fun way to look back on those exciting birding days you spotted and photographed a banded bird!
That’s all for now… I have many more ideas to add so I’ll likely update this post, or write another one soon.
Be well, stay safe, and be kind to others.
Your birding friend,
Christian