From Christmas Bird Count to Road-Kill Bugs

An interesting set of articles in the current issue of Audubon Magazine.

The November/December 2014 issue of Audubon Magazine has an interesting set of articles on “three innovators who have led the charge in studying birds”—Chan Robbins (“The Pioneer”); Sam Droege (“The Incubator”); and, Jessica Zelt (“The Futurist”).

The articles, under the umbrella of “Citizen Science: Passing the Torch”, show how the torch was passed from 96-year-old Robbins to 56-year-old Droege to 31-year-old Zelt.

At least as far as birds go, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count —which both Robbins and Droege have participated in—at 115 years old, is the oldest citizen science project.  Robbins in fact, through his father who participated in the very first of these counts, has a lineage back to the entire 115 years of bird citizen science.

The Audubon bird count is the oldest citizen science project period, at least since the end of the era in which all science was done by citizen scientists rather than professionals.  It is definitely, as the magazine states, “the world’s oldest continuous wildlife census”.

I am fortunate enough to be preparing for about my 12th consecutive Christmas bird count.  From 2003 through 2011, I participated in the counts on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland.   Droege also participated in those counts, since his office is on the grounds of the Center, from which I retired after the 2011 Christmas bird count.  Droege is a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which is headquartered on 12,840 acres adjacent to the Agricultural Center’s 7,000 acres.   Robbins has studied these grounds for more than 70 years.

Robbins created the 50-year-old annual Breeding Bird Survey, a citizen science project that Droege was hired to take over in 1985.  I had the honor of interviewing Robbins twice about his life’s work.

The Johnny Appleseed of Citizen Science

Droege has formed local teams to participate in many citizen science projects, including Bioblitz , Frogwatch USA, and Cricket Crawl .  His professional research activities include work on developing native bee survey techniques and monitoring programs, surveys of saltmarsh birds and surveys of Rusty Blackbirds.  The bee survey work could spawn a national citizen science project.

Droege hired Zelt in 2008 to digitize about six million records of bird arrivals and departures, dating back to 1880.  Over the next six years, she managed to turn the task into a citizen science empire .

I've blogged about both Robbins (9/19/14 , 8/24/14, and 7/17/14)  and Droege (9-16-14, 6/29/14, 6/22/14, and 11/19/13) before.

Bug Road-Kill?

The magazine’s cover has the intriguing title of “115 Years of Citizen Science:  From the Christmas Bird Count to…Road-Killed Bugs?”

Although I knew of a regional U.S. project in which volunteers count road-kill as a measure of animal populations, this was the first I had heard of a road-killed bugs project.  In this project 250 volunteers drove around with adhesive on their front bumpers and license plates to capture bugs that splatter against cars.  Scientists analyzed the results and determined that each car kills two bugs for every 6.2 miles traveled.   The project is limited to the Netherlands currently, but with one in the United Kingdom, the U.S. can’t be far behind.  The magazine says that in the U.S., more than 300 million cars each travel 13,500 miles a year, on average, “so bug mortalities add up”.

Science Wants You!

In addition to the bug road-kill project, the magazine lists six other citizen science projects at the bottom of four of the pages of the three articles, under the title of “Scientists Want You”:

• Frogwatch USA 
• Kestrel nest watch 
• Project Budburst watch  
• Celebrate Urban Birds
• Yard Map  
• Christmas Bird Count    (The Christmas Bird Count occurs each year between  December 14 to January 5, with the one day count date varying by location.  For example,  now that I am in Howard, Ohio, I will participate in the Dec. 21 count sponsored by the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College in Gambier.  To register for this event, e-mail  dohertyh@kenyon.edu or call 740-427-5052.)