Looking for a fun winter project to help the atlas?
Snapshot Wisconsin is a partnership to monitor wildlife year-round, using a statewide network of trail cameras. The project currently has around 1,800 volunteers monitoring over 2,100 cameras across the state. Trail cameras are great at capturing images of deer, elk, and other larger animal species, but have also captured many incidental bird images that may provide information useful to Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas II.
Since 2015, Snapshot Wisconsin has collected 50,000 bird photos, and we need your help to identify them to species-level! Snapshot Wisconsin is launching a new dedicated bird portal on their crowdsourcing platform, Zooniverse.
Here’s how it works:
- You visit the website: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/buegee211/snapshot-wisconsin-bird-edition
(You may want to create a free account to avoid seeing photos twice) - You identify the bird present (if any)
- You assign a breeding code (if applicable)
- After the identifications of three people match, we consider the bird identified
Tips on Breeding Codes:
Recall that we want to assign breeding codes only during the times of year when we expect a species to be on a breeding territory, and the Breeding Guideline Bar Chart is a handy reference for this.
Most photos have the date listed on the top left, which is an important piece of information when deciding to assign a code. If your photo is missing the date, or you also want to see the county, click the little “i” info button in the bottom right of the photo.
When all the photos have been classified, we’ll be able to add some additional records to the atlas! A step-by-step tutorial will appear to show you around and can be accessed at any time. To quickly reference Breeding Bird Atlas resources, click on the field guide on the right side of the screen by the scroll bar. You can also share photos with other users, interact with the researchers, and get second opinions on bird photos!
Enjoy!
The Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas and Snapshot Wisconsin Teams