"The funnest part is to be totally on your own—just you, bird books, and birds and trying to figure out what that thing is you are looking at," he said. "That is when you really get hooked."
Once hooked, birders can participate in several Internet-based bird-counting activities organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society through the BirdSource Web site. The activities include eBird, the Christmas Bird Count, Project FeederWatch, and of course, the Great Backyard Bird Count.
When participating in projects like the Great Backyard Bird Count, it is important that birders count only the birds they can identify—"next year you'll know more," Coyne said. Also, Coyne said participants should report only the greatest number of species that can be seen at one time, in order to prevent the same bird from being counted twice.
Quality Control
As the BirdSource projects and Internet technologies have evolved over the past seven years, project scientists have built in several controls to prevent the mistakes of novice and expert birders alike from corrupting the data.
Filters built into the reporting programs raise flags when weird species or unusually high numbers are reported, prompting an editor to e-mail the participant and seek clarification.
For example, Conyne said that during the 2003 Great Backyard Bird Count, a woman in New Jersey reported a painted bunting. That species normally winters in southern climes such as Florida and Texas.
"I assumed she misidentified a goldfinch in winter plumage, so I wrote to the woman and she said, 'Oh no, it's an adult male painted bunting,'" Conyne said. The woman sent along a picture of the bird in the snow. It turned out to be one of the rarest finds of the winter.
The filters even help novices distinguish between easily confused birds by providing links to descriptions and images of birds that are commonly misidentified, Conyne said.
Even with all the filters, however, some bad data will get through the system, Fitzpatrick said. But given the volume of the data reported, the bad data will become statistically insignificant.
So with the filters in place, even novices can go outside and count birds in the name of science. "It's a fun thing to do," Fitzpatrick said.
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