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Vermont has the most birders per capita in the U.S. according to data from a popular birding app.
by Lucia McCallum
The Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington welcomed visitors for the Great Backyard Bird Count last month. The event is a world-wide community science project where people record the birds they see in the wild over several days in February.
Erin Talmage is the museum’s executive director. She said the Great Backyard Bird Count is just one of many community science projects the museum promotes.
“Our focus is education,” she said. “We’re really here to help people learn about community science, learn about the birds in their backyard, and learn about how they can share the data with other people.”
To participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, birders had to dedicate at least 15 minutes to counting the species they saw around them. Then they logged their findings in an app called eBird.
By the end of the event, Talmage said, “we end up with a little snapshot of the birds around the world.”
Talmage invited visitors to sit with her at the museum’s designated birdwatching window.
“Sitting here, it’s hard to stop at 15 minutes,” she said.
While the museum is considered a birding “hotspot” on eBird, Talmage said people can birdwatch anywhere.
“You can go down to Lake Champlain and see what kind of ducks you find,” she said. “And you don’t have to be in one place. We could go for a walk for 15 minutes and just record what we see.”
The official Great Backyard Bird Count event only lasts four days, but birders can record the birds they see in eBird any time. “All the data is good data,” Talmage said.
According to eBird, Vermont has the most birders per capita of any state in the U.S. And while the data is important, Talmage said the act of birding offers something bigger.
“People around the world have been working together to learn more about birds, hopefully to make better conservation decisions,” she said. “There’s so few things where we are working together with lots of people from different places, and eBird is one of them. It’s a really powerful tool, and it’s something we can all do.”
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public.
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Categories: Animals, Vermonters Making A Difference
Husband not allowed to post. Daughter not allowed to post. Free speech not allowed apparently.
However, this doesn’t alter the well-publicized reality that rare and endangered bird species are caught and killed by the tens of thousands in “sport” trapper’s traps annually in the USA. Source: Nat Geo / National Fish & Wildlife Foundation.
Back to N.H. – Where free speech actually isn’t suppressed.
I’ve seen a photo of a bluejay caught and killed in a leg-hold trap. That’s tragic and horrible.
On a brighter note: I’ve been birdwatching since age nine, and I desperately wanted to see an indigo bunting. I even made up a little song to sing because I thought it would attract the bird (it didn’t work, and possibly scared them off). Imagine how thrilled I was 50 years later to finally see an indigo bunting sitting on my clothesline in Vermont! He came back for two days, and I believe I saw another one flying beside my car down the route near a weedy field.
I’m amazed at the number of birds here; you might see a single merganser in Massachusetts but I’ve seen a flock of nine or so on the river below my house. Kingfishers too! Irruptions of pine siskins, redpolls and goldfinches may contain 30 birds. I’ve clearly moved to the right place for birding. BTW: Thanks, Birds of Vermont Museum, for including one of my poems in an exhibit (here is a newer one).
MY BIRDS
By Ellin Anderson
Let me tell you about my friends
Whose domain begins where the driveway ends,
Whose fast-paced lives lap over the road
As they hasten home to their green abode.
And in the sweet haven of summer days,
No alarm clock rings as I stretch and laze,
Just the cheery warble of my song sparrow,
Piercing my heart like a sugar arrow,
Pulling a ribbon to string it upon,
A red bead beating alone in the dawn
Where the first song sung and remembered as heard
Was the brass bell rung by a little bird
In the mounds of jewel weed lushly beside
A river that flowed with the changing tide.
The robin sings to the dawn, at last,
For he knows that the frost of spring has past;
In the countryside, and the city as well,
The birds are there, and I love to tell
How I watched the chimney swifts at play
Over factory roofs at the close of day;
And the lesson they taught to each girl and boy
Was the pure expression of life and joy,
For you can’t see God as He is and was,
But when you see birds, you can see what He does;
They love all the good things He has to give,
All they want, so that they may simply live:
Pure water, warm straw, and the ripened seed —
By His sacred Law, He meets every need;
Meek birds know each wise Beatitude,
And if they could, they would feel gratitude.
So, let the birds move you wherever they fly —
Be joyful and fruitful and multiply;
Two sparrows were sold for a tiny fee,
But a spotless dove buys Eternity.