Birders in action at SWMLC's Portman Nature Preserve. Photo credit: Amelia Hansen, SWMLC
Your eBirding data helps create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support, and inform ecological management strategies. eBird in Action is a segment which shares the conservation stories made possible because of your contributions. This edition comes from the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative (LTBCI).
“Our volunteers love knowing that their birding contributes to conservation,” says Mitch Lettow, Stewardship Director at Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy (SWMLC). Dubbed the “Bird Herders” by Lettow, this group of eight to ten volunteers monitors 14 sites protected by SWMLC annually, following a bird monitoring protocol to assure the quality of the data they collect in eBird.
Development of the bird monitoring protocol was funded in part by a small grant from the Cornell Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative in 2020. To see the landscape through birds’ eyes would be ideal, Lettow says, but the next best thing is to observe birds through our own eyes and share that data with scientists through eBird.
Bird monitors need to be confident in their bird identification skills, and monitoring requires a commitment and a certain level of expertise, but new birders are encouraged to visit SWMLC preserves and contribute data to eBird hotspots too. A YouTube video titled Birding at SWMLC Nature Preserves was produced to help inspire birders of all levels to get involved, and a page on SWMLC’s website proclaims “You Can Make the World a Better Place for Birds,” encouraging birds of all levels to contribute their observations via the eBird app.
All across the world, birders are providing valuable data to scientists and organizations like SWMLC through citizen science projects. You can, too! Help fill data gaps by tracking observations in eBird at a land trust property near you, or get involved in other citizen science projects from the Cornell Lab.
Read more about SWMLC’s bird monitoring and citizen science projects on the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative website.