Bird phenology is tightly linked with weather patterns and other events that occur on breeding and wintering grounds. Recent changes in climate have sometimes, but not always, altered the timing of bird migrations, reproduction, and other phenological events. Studies are beginning to demonstrate the consequences of these changes to bird populations and conservation strategies, some of which are substantial—e.g., rapid declines in population sizes.

 

The North American Bird Phenology Program (BPP) is a 120-year-old international (United States and Canada) monitoring program and recording scheme, that has tracked arrival and departure times of birds across North American since the 1880s. With six million recorded observations, it is one of the longest and largest collections of phenological records in the world.

 

The BPP’s mission is to provide information that will improve our understanding of the distribution, migration, and abundance of birds, particularly in the context of recent climate change. Because the current BPP data are stored on 2X5 inch cards, our activities focus on the digitization of BPP data. We aim to create a system to digitize BPP data, make them easily accessible to the public, policymakers, and researchers, and establish a model that can be adapted to collect compatible historical and recently collected data.

 

The goals of the BPP are to:

 

• Develop an efficient, accurate, and low cost means of digitizing the BPP’s original 6 million observations using a novel network of online volunteers.

• Develop a verified online database of bird arrival and departure dates with analysis tools that maximize the availability and impact of these data.

• Provide a model for developing additional networks to enter other historical datasets.

 

The BPP fills critical needs for federal agencies, NGOs, academics, and educators in that it:

 

• Provides access one of the largest historical, climate change-relevant datasets, which is of particular value to researchers, wildlife managers, hunters, and recreational birders. 

• Minimizes the costs of digitization through the use of large volunteer networks.

• Provides an method to involve numerous volunteers in important research, adding to its educational value. 

• Provides opportunities for science, management, citizen science and education programs to participate, build from our resources, and use our techniques to digitize other historical datasets.

 

Integration with the USA National Phenology Network

 

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) collects phenological observations of plants and animals in cooperation with existing phenology monitoring programs, with the aim to increase our understanding of how the phenologies of organisms and landscapes respond to environmental variation and climate change. The goals of the USA-NPN and the BPP align naturally. In particular, the USA-NPN database would provide an ideal location to store the BPP data, making it publicly accessible and integrating it with other phenological data. Also, the BPP methods for digitizing historical data could be adapted to digitize other historical datasets of phenology data. The USA-NPN’s relationships with numerous government agencies, academic institutions, nongovernmental programs, and other organizations, and its knowledge of many key historical datasets, would facilitate the use of the BPP’s digitization techniques to rescue important data.