Bird watching goes ‘digital’

Thousands of volunteers are helping document the rise and fall of birds in the province. CTV London’s Scott Miller has the details on this unique project.

Kaelyn Bumelis and Mike Burrell are looking for birds in Bruce County. But this isn’t an idle hobby, they’re leading a cross-Ontario bird data collection project.

“The Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas project is a community science project where a bunch of volunteer birders and Atlas staff all go out and try to document Ontario’s breeding birds. And essentially, we’re trying to figure out their distribution and their abundance across the province, which is a huge province as you find out when you’re trying to cover it all,” said Bumelis, who is the project manager for Ontario’s Bird Atlas, with Birds Canada.

Collecting data for Ontario’s Breeding Bird Atlas happens every 20 years and takes five years to complete.

This is year five of data collection for this Bird Atlas, where the province is broken up into 10 by 10-kilometre sections, for over 2,000 volunteers and Atlas organizers to find and document as many birds as possible.

This year’s Bird Atlas will have the benefit of the digital age, specifically the Nature Counts app, which eliminates paper and pen documentation in favour of a new app developed in partnership with Birds Canada.

“You don’t need to even know where you are. Your phone has a built in GPS, so it records exactly where you are, and knows what time it is, what day it is. So, it gets all that information for you, and it just makes collecting the data so simple. It really makes us not only be able to get better data, but a lot more information as well,” said Burrell, who is the Bird Atlas co-ordinator with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

“It knows where you are. Obviously, you know, it records the time, date, and exact location. Then, you can just get to surveying without having to enter all that data later, which is honestly super helpful,” said Bumelis.

This is the third Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas, which means there is bird data dating back to 1981. Burrell said bird health and abundance is usually a good indicator of how Ontario’s entire ecosystem is functioning – or not functioning.

“Species like Canada geese and wild turkeys and red bellied woodpeckers are doing great. Their numbers are just so much higher than they than they were 40 years ago. But other birds, like some of the grassland birds like swallows that feed on insects in the air, the aerial insectivores, as we call them, some of those are not doing so well,” said Burrell.

“Red bellied woodpeckers in Ontario, they’re definitely increasing. They’re moving up further north into Ontario. 20 years ago, they were really in deep southwestern Ontario, but they’re moving northeast. Whereas, you know, other bird species tend to be declining. We’re seeing fewer Blue-winged Teal and other bird species,” said Bumelis.

Bumelis said data collection will wrap up this year for Ontario’s third Bird Atlas, and the final results will be released by 2027. The information is vital, she said, for all Ontario stakeholders.

“It could be for governments to make decisions. It could be for bird conservation organizations to plan conservation strategies. It could be for land trusts to decide, ‘Oh, that’s an area that has a lot of rare or declining species, and a place we need to protect.’ It can be used by industries, and folks like that to make the most effective business decisions as well, when they need to consider those things,” said Burrell.

You can learn more at Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas.