Do you know about the Corvid family of birds? What about phenophases? Springtime is in the air and it’s a good time to engage students of all ages in some great citizen science projects. Project BudBurst is an exemplary citizen scientist program that engages the public in making careful observations of phenophases: first leafing, first flower, first fruit ripening, etc. of trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses in local areas. You can also share your photos on Flickr, join scientists on the BudBurst science blogs, explore the field guides, and much more. There are projects for students, for educators, and special projects for everyone. Also check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s extensive projects, including:
- Citizen Science Central - a clearinghouse for ideas, partnerships, toolkits, references, projects
- BirdSleuth - inquiry-based citizen science program for middle school kids
- Birds in Forested Landscapes - effects of human-caused changes on forest-dwelling birds
- CamClickr - photo-tagging to identify breeding behaviours captured from Lab of O’s NestCams
- eBird - realtime, online checklist program for reporting sightings
- NestWatch - teaches how to monitor nests and collect breeding data
- Celebrate Urban Birds - submit data to Cornell Lab of O scientists - sign up, get a kit, download materials
- You can also utilize the Macaulay Library’s extensive archive of animal sounds and videos.
Get outdoors and get active!
This is terrific! Your readers might enjoy some of the projects we’ve got listed over at ScienceForCitizens.net (citizen scientists can even create their own member blogs there, to share information, photos, and videos about their projects).
Eileen: Your readers might also like to know about ScienceForCitizens.net’s “Project Finder.” It’s a new, quick-growing, searchable list of citizen science activities of all types, from birding to environmental monitoring to analysis of galaxies and more.
The finder is at: http://www.scienceforcitizens.net/finder/
–Michael, Cofounder, Science for Citizens