By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

ITHACA, N.Y. — Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas and other locales in North America. About 15,000 people from all 50 states and all of the Canadian provinces take part.

“Project FeederWatch is a program designed to help monitor the numbers of birds all across North America, where those birds are located and to track changes in the numbers and locations of birds over time,” said David Bonter, ornithologist and project leader. “We’ve been going for 23 years now.”

FeederWatchers come from completely rural landscapes to cities providing a window on the effects of urbanization and land use change on bird populations, he said.

“We’re probably strongest in suburban landscapes, but we would really love more data from the rural, more farming-type of landscapes,” Bonter said. “There’s a lot going on there and we’re seeing big changes in bird communities in agricultural landscapes in Europe; it is very likely happening here too, we just haven’t looked at that yet.”

Twenty-five scientific publications have been based on FeederWatch data. That data has documented range shifts of species such as Northern cardinals, tufted titmouse, red-bellied woodpeckers and Carolina wrens.

“These are all species that are extending their range to the north, most likely related in some way to warmer winters and climate change,” Bonter said. “Some species are moving north a couple of hundred kilometers a decade, which is a pretty remarkable rate of movement.”

Another thing the ornithologists are looking at is invasive species. Most people are familiar with house sparrows and European starlings, which are not native to North America. The Eurasian Collared Dove, another introduced species, was brought into south Florida in the early 1980s, Bonter said.

“FeederWatchers have documented a remarkably rapid spread of this species across North America,” Bonter said. “In the year 2000 they were in seven states, and as of last year they were in 39 states. Every indication shows that they are going to become more and more common.

“The question becomes, what effect are they having on our native species like the mourning doves, white-winged doves the common ground dove?”

FeederWatch, a joint research and education project of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada, will be looking at those data and hopes to have more information soon.
“We are interested in helping everyone learn more about bird populations,” Bonter said.

He added that FeederWatch is a program open to all interest and skill levels. Participants do not have to be expert birders.

“You don’t even have to know many species of birds at all because when you sign up, we’ll send a research kit and in that kit is a poster of all the birds that you’re likely to see at feeders in your area,” Bonter said. “If you can match the birds sitting on the feeder with a picture of the bird on the poster and if you can count you can very likely successfully contribute information to Project FeederWatch.”

The kit includes information to help people learn about what is in their own backyards, Bonter said.

“FeederWatch is about research, it’s about collecting data but there’s also a big educational component in trying to help people to better understand what they’re seeing in their own neighborhoods and better appreciate that,” he said.

For information visit www.feederwatch.org or write to Project FeederWatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Lane, Ithaca, NY 14850.