| Bird Monitoring Projects |
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Citizen science" is the term used to describe scientific work in which individual volunteers or networks of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation and measurement. In few fields is citizen science as well developed and supported as it is in ornithological circles. The basis of citizen science is that you - a volunteer with no specific scientific training - can make a huge impact on bird conservation and our understanding of birds, their movements, their habits and their behaviour. In fact most of what we know about bird distributions and bird biology is thanks to ordinary birders like you! BirdLife South Africa, in partnership with the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town, has several long term monitoring projects in which the contribution of ordinary birders is of the greatest importance and value. The projects include: • The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) Other interesting bird monitoring projectsMyBirdPatch MyBirdPatch is an initiative to capture bird lists from small, local patches to monitor bird population changes on a fine scale.It is a project of the Animal Demography Unit, in collaboration with BirdLife South Africa and South African National Biodiversity Institute. It is about birding in your zone of comfort: your garden, your neighbourhood, a local park or wetland, a golf course etc. It also provides a special opportunity for schools and learners to be involved, and we hope that the grounds of many schools will be registered as MyBirdPatches, and that groups at schools will start the process of doing long-term monitoring, and maybe even quantifying the impact of "greening" projects on bird species richness and bird abundance. You define the boundaries of your patches and you can have more than one patch that youmonitor. Lists are easily captured and submitted on line. You can also submit photos of species and your patches. The MyBirdPatch project hopes to attract a whole new cohort of observers into project birding and that many will graduate to become full-protocol atlasers. Visit the MyBirdPatch website to register as an observer and start submitting your lists. The project also has a dynamic Facebook group to which everyone is invited to join (just search for MyBirdPatch). PHOWN (pronounced 'phone') PHOWN (PHotos of Weaver Nests) is a new ADU Virtual Musem project, where weaver nests or colonies may be photographed and submitted. To take part in this project, you need to register as a virtual museum participant. Then find weaver nests and take photos and count the nests. Any weaver species (Ploceidae family) may be photographed. "When the ADU uses the term 'museum, it is not to interpreted as the display part of a museum, the bit that is accessible to the public. The picture in your mind ought to be what you discover behind the scenes in a museum, when you go through the door that says 'private, staff only' and you find endless drawers of neatly catalogued specimens (date, place, species, collector) with lots of replicates of a single species. This, not the public display, is the real museum and these are the specimens used for research into distribution, taxonomy etc. The ADU's museums are 'virtual'. They are not the specimens themselves, but the digital images of them." Les Underhill, ADU. Read more details about how to take part by visiting http://weavers.adu.org.za/phown.php You can view submissions already made (without being registered) as well as register to take part in the project by visiting http://vmus.adu.org.za   
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:21 |
SAFRING
