Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
As we get to the bottom of our card-catalog drawers, we are finding random cards or species that were overlooked. Keep a look-out, we'll be rerunning old projects with recently discovered data!
Research
[Photo credits on FAQ page.]
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, nestled in the Finger Lakes region of New York, is a world-renowned ornithological research, education, and conservation facility. Among our collections are more than 300,000 nest records from the North American Nest Record Card Program that ran from the 1960s until the early 2000s. Some cards pre-date the 1960s, likely because some naturalists were collecting this information before the formal program existed. Thousands of nesting birds, including Prothonotary Warblers, were observed by citizen scientists, who then submitted detailed accounts of bird nesting behavior.
NestWatch, a citizen-science project of the Lab, is working to transcribe these data in hopes of better understanding the nesting patterns of North American birds. Valuable scientific questions can be asked and answered regarding the nesting behavior of birds over time by examining historical records. We hope to bring new discoveries to light using these previously hidden datasets.
Warblers are often hard to locate and observe in the natural world, as they frequently nest higher in the tree canopy. They are small and quick, often making it difficult to photograph them. It is not uncommon to know a warbler is present by its song or call, rather than by spotting it with binoculars; this is especially true when it comes to spotting nests.
The research potential of this information is invaluable. Join us in meeting our goal of transcribing all of these nest records to better understand and protect birds.