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WANTED: EXPERIENCED BACKYARD BIRD FEEDERS! WHEN YOU WILL MONITOR BIRDS:
FORMS NEEDED FOR MONITORING BIRDS: MONITORING BIRDS: Make a concerted effort to begin monitoring birds at a time that birds are most likely to be at feeders. The exact times for observations may be based on previous feeding experiences. When have birds come to your feeders in the past? With this information, monitoring should be done at those times. The starting time for the 45-minute period should be selected without knowledge of whether birds are at your feeders at that starting time or not (i.e., select a start time of 9:00 AM as opposed to beginning observations when there are birds at your feeders). Once a monitoring period has begun, observations are to continue for 45 minutes whether birds are at the feeders or not.
Mammals can be on the ground below the feeders, but they cannot be on the feeders themselves. Any legal and ethical means can be used to dissuade mammals from using the feeders during monitoring. If a mammal gains access to a feeder during the observation period, they must be scared away before monitoring can continue. After the mammal has left the feeder, do not monitor for five minutes after the mammal has left, and add five minutes to the observation period. If a hawk passes by or a cat is near the feeder, the predator must leave the area before monitoring can continue. After the predator has left the area, do not monitor for five minutes after the predator has left, and add five minutes to the observation period. DATA COLLECTION: A bird is defined as being at the feeder only if it is physically on the feeder, including the roof of a feeder, if applicable. Birds on the ground below the feeder are not to be counted. Example: Let's say you began a monitoring period at 7:45 am. The only bird you see is a dark-eyed junco and it is underneath a platform feeder. In this case, you would not record a dark-eyed junco (or any other species) as being at your feeder, because a bird is defined as being at the feeder only if it is physically on the feeder including the roof of a feeder. Thus, you would enter 0 dark-eyed juncos (and 0 for all other species) on your data sheet for observation 1. At 7:50 am, you would once again record the number of birds of each species observed at each feeder. You observe one dark-eyed junco on the platform feeder, and you should record one dark-eyed junco on the data sheet for observation 2. At 7:55 am, you observe two dark-eyed juncos on the platform feeder and record two juncos on the data sheet for observation 3. At 8:00, 8:05, 8:10, and 8:15 AM you observe no birds at the platform feeder and you would record 0 birds on the data sheet for observations 4, 5, 6, and 7. At 8:20 AM, you observe two northern cardinals at your platform feeder, and thus, would record those two cardinals on your data sheet for observation 8. Because there are no juncos at the platform feeder at 8:20 AM, you would record 0 juncos as being seen during observation 8 (as well as 0 for all other species). At 8:25, you observe one northern cardinal at the feeder and record one cardinal on your data sheet for observation 9. Finally, at 8:30 AM you observe one northern cardinal and one dark-eyed junco on the feeder, and thus, record 1 of each species on your data sheet for observation 10.
Thus, after 45 minutes, you made 10 observations of the birds at your feeder with each observation spaced 5 minutes apart. A separate data sheet is necessary for each of your 4 feeders for each monitoring period. Completed data sheets are to be submitted through the internet for analysis after each monitoring period. After electronic submission of the data, you will be given the opportunity double check your internet entries with the entries on the data sheet. Do not deviate from the above counting procedure and maintain consistency in your counting methods throughout the study! Do not record a species as being present at a feeder unless you have positively identified the species. Make notes about your observation in case you positively identify the species at a later date. Record the bird's size, field marks, and attempt to take a picture of the bird. After recording field marks, use the bird identification tool on the PROJECT WILDBIRD website or contact the Project Coordinator for assistance. What happens if the protocol isn't followed?
FEEDER PLACEMENT: Feeders should also be placed in a manner that a squirrel cannot jump on to a feeder using vegetative cover (i.e., trees, bushes) or houses above the feeder. Feeders are to be numbered 1 through 4 with feeder 1 being the feeder farthest to the left relative to your viewing area and followed by feeders 2, 3, and 4 to the right.
MAINTAINING FEEDERS: Feeders should be cleaned regularly and kept cleared of leaves, snow, seed hulls and other debris. Always fill your feeders with dry seed. Make sure the seed ports are not clogged with seed shells or other debris. Feeders should be filled to the top daily, or in the case of platform feeders, filled so that seed evenly covers all parts of the feeder. If you are going to run out of seed prior to the end of the 64-day monitoring season, contact the Project Coordinator. SEED INFORMATION: Seed Key: BOS . . . . Black Oil Sunflower SEED ROTATION INFORMATION: Black Oil Sunflower and White Proso Millet feeders are to remain up and be filled for the duration of the study. These two seeds serve as standards by which all other seed types will be compared. You will be assigned a rotation schedule to allow for other seeds to be in the yard via e-mail. The order of rotation and the beginning seeds within a feeder will be randomly assigned. SEED ROTATION AND MONITORING SPECIFICS: Days 1 - 2 = Session 1 Days 3 - 4 = Session 2 Days 5 - 6 = Session 3 Days 7 - 8 = Session 4 On the first day of each session, the appropriate seeds are placed in the designated feeders based on the assigned seed rotation schedule. There is no recording of data on the first day. On the second day of each session, 45-minutes of monitoring takes place.
Each participant will receive four identical feeders. These four feeders will be one of three types (i.e., platform, hopper or tubular) that will be assigned randomly to each participant.
Each participant will receive 10 types of seeds.
Seeds should be rotated on days 1, 3, 5, 7 of each segment and monitoring should take place on days 2, 4, 6, 8. Thus, if an eight-day segment begins on a Monday: BOS, WP, CC, WPM is the order of seeds. On Tuesday, the first 45 minute monitoring session of the eight-day monitoring segment will take place. On Wednesday, seeds should be moved to the following position: WPM, BOS, WP and CC. On Thursday, the second monitoring session of the eight-day monitoring segment will take place. Each season, the rotation pattern will be completed twice. If you would like to join PROJECT WILDBIRD as an Experimental Citizen Scientist, click here. |
Each monitoring period must last for 45 minutes. During the 45-minute period, you will record the number of birds of each species observed at each feeder every 5 minutes. Thus, when your 45-minute monitoring period begins you will record the number of birds of each species observed at each feeder. You will then repeat the process every 5 minutes until 45 minutes has expired. Thus, you will make 10 total observations of the feeders during the 45 -minute period.
MAMMALS AND BIRD PREDATORS:
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Header Photos by Helen Ellis, Backyard Boutique