music; ambience: birds
“I’ve been very excited today. I’ve had male tree swallows swooping around the area. They’ve returned from their wintering grounds and are feeding in the area. Such a great sign, we’ve had great weather today, after a very cold and icy February.”
Joni James’ passion for birds is widely shared. And as a citizen scientist with NestWatch, she can share her observations with a much larger community than just the neighbors in her Indiana hometown. Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Monitoring birds that nest in her backyard, Joni submits her data online.
“I set out birdhouses, plastic gourds, so forth to provide nesting sites for cavity nesting birds. And then during the spring and summer I monitor these and collect data. I keep track of what birds are using the sites, the birdhouses. I keep track of when nesting began. The dates, how many eggs are laid, which is called a clutch. I keep track of when the eggs hatch, how many nestlings. And then eventually the date and number of fledglings when they actually leave the nest.”
Information that Joni James collects becomes part of a national database at Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology, helping scientists to answer wide-ranging ecological questions about populations of birds.
“The more people who participate, the more data can be collected. There are only so many scientists, so many ornithologists. And then this information helps in the study of the birding biology of cavity-nesting birds, and also the conservation of them.”
To check out Joni James’ blog, visit pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
music