Volunteers Philip Lehman, Xavier Gitre, and Jonah Hutchinson conduct bird monitoring at a project site. Photo credit: Becky Keller, Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture
Your eBirding data helps create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support, and inform ecological management strategies. eBird in Action is a segment which shares the conservation stories made possible because of your contributions. This edition comes from the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative (LTBCI).
The whole business of land conservation is based on the willingness and excitement of landowners, says Grayson Davie, Conservation Coordinator at New River Land Trust (NRLT) in the Catawba Valley of Virginia. He notes that connecting on a personal basis with landowners and finding out what they are passionate about is the key to success.
Birds appeal to so many people through their colorful plumage and interesting vocalizations; they can inspire connections with nature and can also help landowners get excited about conservation. Thus, as part of a Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative small grant project in 2023, NRLT set out to understand bird species occurrence on two large farm properties protected by conservation easements in an effort to build relationships with the landowners.
Through the grant, NRLT volunteers surveyed birds on the properties during the breeding season and fall migration period. NRLT staff then compared the bird data collected by their volunteers to the data available through the Northeast Bird Habitat Conservation Initiative (NBHCI) Mapping Tool, an interactive decision support tool that displays modeled eBird Status & Trends data in 13 states for 43 bird species.
Over the course of this project, to collect bird data in the field, NRLT staff conducted 26 site visits with staff from Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture, a co-applicant on this grant, and seven volunteers from the Virginia Tech Bird Club and Blacksburg High School. Bird monitoring was conducted along 350 foot transects on working farms, and data was recorded using eBird, the online checklist program.
The study was designed by NRLT’s bird partner Becky Keller, who is the science coordinator at Appalachian Mountain Joint Venture. During monitoring visits, 87 bird species were observed, including common grassland birds like Eastern Bluebird, Song Sparrow, and Red-winged Blackbird—and some species in decline and listed as Species of Greatest Conservation Need in Virginia’s State Wildlife Action Plan, such as Eastern Meadowlark and Grasshopper Sparrow. Before bird surveys were conducted, NRLT hosted three days of eBird training for the volunteers to make sure they were comfortable identifying bird species by sight and sound; volunteers also learned to enter data correctly in the eBird app to ensure their data’s use in future scientific research and bird conservation measures, including analyses of bird population changes over time.
“Our volunteers were the meat of this study,” notes Davie, who was pleasantly surprised by how robust the data was and what a fantastic job volunteers had done collecting it. “This project was successful because we had so much good data,” he says.
After comparing the NBHCI Mapping Tool data with bird observation data collected in the field, NRLT found good alignment between the two data sources and feels comfortable referring to NBHCI data and pointing landowners to it, says Davie. “We now have another set of data that we can use to get people interested in conservation and land protection,” he says. In the past, NRLT’s conservation value assessments, which are used to prioritize land protection and acquisition projects, have not included bird data; now, NRLT is making bird data part of their prioritization process and including it in conversations with landowners.
Davie says that landowners often want to know what kinds of birds are on their property and how they can help improve the habitat for these species, making a difference through actions on their land no matter how big or small. Bird data can open doors to these conversations and get landowners interested in conservation. “If there is a certain target bird on their property, now we can tell them about the bird and the science behind it and get them excited about their part in its conservation story,” says Davie.
Learn more about the Northeast Bird Habitat Conservation Initiative (NBHCI), explore the NBHCI Mapping Tool, and log your bird observations on eBird to contribute to science and conservation in your area.
Read more about NRLT’s small grant project on the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative website.