Even in a city, birds are everywhere you look: pigeons burbling on the rooftops, sparrows fluttering around a puddle, and a seagull flying by with something that looks suspiciously like a pizza crust.
The shores and woods of Essex County, Massachusetts see more than 300 species of birds every year. Some are permanent residents, while some are just passing through on a migration to South America or the Arctic Circle.
“Essex County is a really interesting place from a biodiversity standpoint,” says Jane Winchell, PEM’s Sarah Fraser Robbins Director of the Art & Nature Center. “We’re right on the coast, but we have a rich mix of woodlands and fields, and thousands of acres of wetlands,” including the largest salt marsh North of Long Island. That mix of diverse habitats at this latitude is what brings Southern species and Northern species together. “It’s a special place,” she adds.
The diversity of birds on the North Shore feels especially precious considering the mounting threats to bird populations worldwide: habitat destruction, rising ocean temperatures, and changes to vital food sources as plants and insects along migration routes dwindle or shift due to climate change.
These losses can feel like an overwhelming, global problem, but getting involved in your local area can still make a difference. One way to do that is through community science projects. Also known as citizen science, this movement relies on ordinary people recording simple observations about the natural world, like when a tree leafs out in the spring, or how many honey bees visit a vegetable garden. These observations come together into larger data sets that scientists use to draw conclusions and spark new research.
“There's a really wide array of ways that people can participate in citizen science,” says Winchell. “Everything from using your backyard bird feeder to observe and count birds to taking part in an international science project…there's a spectrum of ways that we can be participating meaningfully in science and learning about the scientific process and what makes science distinctive.”
That process can start at home, with a simple question about the world around us: Is that chickadee in the bush by the mailbox the same one that comes every day? Or is there a whole flock that comes one at a time? Is that seagull on the pier a Herring Gull, a Ring-billed Gull or a rare Glaucous Gull that flew in from Europe? What does that say about its nesting and food supply?
“The more we observe, the more questions come to mind,” Winchell says.
At this point, you may be thinking, Wait a minute, I didn’t even know there were different types of seagulls. How am I going to contribute anything useful?
A Northern cardinal rests on a snowy bird feeder. Photo by Meg Boeni/PEM.
One upcoming project may be the perfect place to start. February marks the Great Backyard Bird Count, a global event co-sponsored by the Cornell Ornithology Lab, the Audubon Society and Birds Canada (Oiseux Canada). Participation is easy: just pick one spot in your neighborhood, anytime between February 17-20, 2023, and count the birds you see and hear for as little as 15 minutes. Then, identify your birds and report your observations online. Ornithologists use the collected data to track the ways bird populations are moving and changing across the world.
Birdwatching may seem like a hobby that has to be done in deep quiet, at dawn, by people with expensive binoculars – but it’s for everyone, everywhere. Or, as scientist and birder Christian Cooper says, “Birds belong to no one but are for everyone to enjoy.”
Try borrowing a field guide from your local library, or check out Mass Audubon's online birding resources. The free Merlin app (named for the raptor, not the wizard) from Cornell Ornithology Labs makes it easy for new birders to ID an animal based on its color, body shape and behavior. It can also “listen” and identify bird calls in real time. (Just be careful of mockingbirds. I have one backyard visitor who has successfully fooled the app into thinking he’s both a house finch and a red-tailed hawk.)
Even if you think there aren’t any remarkable birds in your neighborhood, your observations still matter. Bird counts from urban areas, for example — places where you’re more likely to see a pigeon and a sparrow than a ruby-throated hummingbird and a yellow-bellied sapsucker – often make vital contributions to our scientific understanding of a geographic area.
“There are different zones to our environment, different types of habitats. And an urban environment is a type of habitat,” says Winchell. “Having people who are in different places and making these observations helps to fill in the picture of what’s going on in those environments.
“And if there's a sudden, significant change, then that might prompt a scientist to say, ‘you know, that's a surprising observation.’
“It’s about stimulating thoughts and ideas and connections.”
Turns out, Essex County residents have been taking notes about the birds in their backyards for over a century. The Essex County Ornithological Society (ECOC) was founded in 1916, ten years after a group of locals started an annual gathering to count bird species along the Ipswich River. Today, the group organizes regular educational talks and trips, and the bird counting and canoeing weekend along the Ipswich still takes place every May.
PEM hosts ECOC’s monthly gatherings and shares recordings for the public on Youtube. The next talk on March 3 will discuss migration with naturalist and author Scott Weidensaul, who has spent the past several decades tracking saw-whet owls (the East Coast’s tiniest owl), snowy owls and hummingbirds.
The ECOC talks are just one facet of a long-standing commitment. Curators and naturalists associated with PEM were documenting local bird populations as far back as the 1830s. Their research “contributed to an understanding of this region and a dedication to preservation that’s quite notable,” Winchell says.
Visitors can view a selection of local birds in Backyard Birds and Beyond in the Pod. This collection of taxidermied specimens may strike modern visitors as strange, and even sad, but shooting and preserving birds was once the only effective way to study them before high-powered binoculars and color photography. The naturalists who collected these specimens did so for educational purposes. Their collection was a way of creating an official record of sightings, before scientists and the public were fully aware of “the alarm of a declining bird population,” Winchell says. (PEM has not added to its taxidermied animal collection in decades, and does not maintain the equipment for preserving new natural history specimens.) Now, many scientists use lower-impact methods such as banding, in which birds are gently captured using soft nets and fly off fitted with a tiny numbered bracelet.
And the museum’s oldest birds are still revealing their secrets. Genetic sampling and chemical analysis provides data about historic bird populations that wouldn’t otherwise be available. In this way, natural history specimens represent “a window into the past that is irretrievable otherwise,” Winchell says. She points out that PEM also has a collection of preserved insects that predate DDT, one of the most destructive pesticides of the 20th century.
It’s never too late to become a part of the movement to protect bird populations in Essex County, or wherever you call home. If you can’t join the Great Backyard Bird Count, consider participating in an Earth Day gathering to record and remove invasive plants or report on trash in a state park. (If you live near the Middlesex Fells, you can even count dog poop for science.) Mass Audubon is constantly sharing information on new community science projects in the state. The organization also offers special opportunities for younger Massachusetts residents, such as the Youth Climate Leadership Program.
“There’s been a lot of effort to preserve regions of Essex County so we can support [our most vital bird and other] species,” Winchell concludes. There’s more, and urgent, work to be done, but “when a lot of people care…we all benefit.”
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