Participation campaign
Birds count for science
The Nature Conservation Union and the Bavarian State Union for the Protection of Birds are calling for birds to be counted in the garden – blackbirds can also be observed. photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa
Blackbirds, tits, sparrows – the native birds are particularly active in spring and are easy to observe. Those who take the time to do this can now serve science.
Who is chirping in the garden or park? This is what nature conservation organizations want to know and are therefore calling on the population to count the birds on their doorstep starting tomorrow.
According to the German Nature Conservation Union (Nabu) and the Bavarian Nature Conservation Association LBV, the hands-on campaign “Hour of the Garden Birds” provides important insights into the changes in the native bird world.
“Thanks to the many people who regularly take part, it is possible to read and scientifically evaluate trends for the settlement area,” explains LBV biologist Angelika Nelson. If you are lucky, you can observe, for example, blackbirds, tits, starlings, wagtails, swifts or blackcaps. Nabu and LBV are organizing the counting campaign for the 19th time this year. According to Nabu, around 67,000 people nationwide took part last year.
Proven: project makes sense
A research team from the University of Vienna has just investigated that such so-called citizen science projects, in which citizens support science, can make a valuable contribution to the behavioral observation of birds. To this end, over three years, more than 2,000 visitors to a wildlife park in Grünau, Upper Austria, had the spatial distribution of three individually marked bird species documented.
In the study published in the journal “ERL – Environmental Research Letter”, the researchers came to the conclusion that the accuracy of the data depends on the bird species and the task. The accuracy varied accordingly from 12.5 to 100 percent. Volunteers are therefore quite capable of collecting exact data, they write.
Anyone who would like to take part in the “Hour of the Garden Birds” only needs to count the birds in the garden, on the balcony, in front of the window or in the park for one hour from May 12th to 14th. The highest number of a species that can be observed at the same time is then reported. This can be done via the Internet, an app, by telephone or by letter.