Citizen Science

Birdwatching Fundamentals 8 ended with shared checklists. This chapter goes further: how organised counts turn the observations of ordinary watchers into data that scientists use, what a long-running example looks like, and where volunteer data is strong and weak. You do not need to be an expert to contribute, but you do need to count carefully and honestly.

What Citizen Science Is

Wikipedia's Citizen science article describes it as research conducted with the participation of the general public, amateur or nonprofessional researchers. It quotes the Oxford English Dictionary (added June 2014): "scientific work undertaken by members of the general public." It says involvement ranges from contributory roles (collecting data, classifying information) to co-creation and "extreme citizen science", where volunteers help set goals or lead projects. It adds that birds are the most commonly observed group in biodiversity citizen science data.

The Christmas Bird Count

Wikipedia's Christmas Bird Count article gives the origin: in December 1900 the ornithologist Frank Chapman "proposed counting birds on Christmas instead of killing them", in place of the Christmas "side hunts" in which people "competed at how many birds they could kill". The article calls it the world's longest-running citizen science survey and says the National Audubon Society runs it with Bird Studies Canada and others.

Each count is held in a circle "with a diameter of 15 miles (24 kilometres)", on any day from 14 December to 5 January inclusive. Volunteers follow set routes and count every bird they see, and in most circles some people also watch feeders. The data give population information for conservation biology and winter-range data that complement breeding surveys.

Garden and Feeder Surveys

The Citizen science article lists several bird projects: Project FeederWatch (affiliated with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology); NestWatch, which tracks nesting, eggs, hatching and chick survival with observations every 3 to 4 days; and hawk-watchers who count migrating raptors each spring and autumn. It also says the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch began in 1979 and that in 2024 over 600,000 people counted almost 10 million birds. (I tried a separate encyclopaedia page for the Birdwatch and it could not be found, so only the Citizen science article's figures are used; check.) Dividing, that is an average of about 16 or 17 birds per person (10 million ÷ 600,000), if both figures are taken as given; the article says "almost" and "over", so the average is approximate.

What Volunteer Data Does Well

• Volunteers can cover far larger areas and timeframes than individual researchers.
• Theobald et al. (2015) surveyed 388 biodiversity projects and estimated 1.36 million to 2.28 million annual volunteers.
• Kosmala et al. (2016) concluded that volunteer datasets can be "reliably high quality, on par with those produced by professionals."
• European breeding bird survey data feeds the Farmland Bird Index, which the EU adopted as a sustainable development indicator.

Where It Falls Short

How to Take Part Well

• Count completely. Record every species you can identify, not just the interesting ones (Birdwatching Fundamentals 8).
• Follow the project's method. A set route and a set time make your count comparable with other people's (my reasoning; check).
• Record what you did not identify. Honest "unknown" is better than a guess (Birdwatching Fundamentals 4).
• Protect the birds. The ethics in Birdwatching Fundamentals 7 apply to counting too.

Not Yet Verified, and Sources

• Sources. The Christmas Bird Count article was read as a summary and its latest participation figures are for 2012-13. The Citizen science article: the first 100,000 of about 283,000 characters were read through a summary, so most of its later sections are unread. A third page I tried could not be found.
• Unchecked. The Big Garden Birdwatch figures come only from the Citizen science article. Whether any figure is more recent than the articles' last edits is unknown.
• My own. The circle area, the average birds per person and the participation advice (check).

Exercises