Research
The "Did I see a banded bird!?" was created in Brazil in 2016 (the original name, in Portuguese, is “Eu vi uma ave usando pulseiras!?”, visit our website), with the goal of engaging the public in monitoring banded (ringed) birds. This effort may prove useful in a variety of ecological and ornithological research contexts that require data from individually identifiable wild birds. The number of bird enthusiasts globally is enormous, and researchers are marking birds in many locations, yet projects involving public participation in reporting sightings of banded birds are still scarce.
Although we believe there is great potential in engaging the public in monitoring banded birds, it is necessary to evaluate this methodology. Therefore, we gathered videos of banded birds at four locations within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Biome, from urban parks to forest reserves, planning to engage the public in helping us to investigate the utility of this approach. We captured and banded different species at each location. In order to allow individual identification by visual observation, each captured bird received a numbered metallic band provided by the Centre for Bird Monitoring of the Brazilian Institute for Environmental Affairs (CEMAVE/IBAMA) and up to two colored plastic bands in a unique color combination regardless of the species. The birds were then safely released at the point of capture.
Within each of the four study sites, we placed camera traps focused on bird feeders and garden ponds to evaluate how often the banded birds visited the resource. Preliminary analysis on some videos demonstrated that some brands of plastic bands broke off or faded color after a short period of time. As you may imagine, this band loss would have implications for scientific research, so we seek to investigate which bands and which colors are best for longer-term monitoring.
Most of the citizens help the project in person by visiting one of our study areas. However, we use Zooniverse to welcome citizens from anywhere to watch our camera trap videos and identify the colors of bands. This method is extremely useful for validating our field protocol.
