It’s good to have a comfort zone — a website where you can go to learn about birds, trust to be accurate and also find learning opportunities, valuable information and enjoyment.
For me, that’s the Cornell Ornithology Lab in Ithaca, New York, www.birds.cornell.edu.
At its heart, the lab is about scientific research on birds. Information is distributed through the website in an easy-to-access and -read format. Its Macaulay Library has more than 175,000 audio and 60,000 video recordings.
While the lab, founded in 1915, has several Cornell University faculty members on staff, the nonprofit depends on donations, research grants and other programs for 99 percent of its operating budget.
So when Project Feeder Watch (now through April 8) asks for $18 for its kit, you can write the check knowing that it’s for a good cause. Each year about 20,000 citizen scientists receive a kit that includes a handbook and instructions, tips on successfully attracting birds, an identification poster with the most common feeder birds, a calendar, a Cornell Lab newsletter, and a summary of Feeder Watch findings.
“Currently, we are tracking several range expansions in both the western and eastern part of the continent,” said project leader Emma Greig. “We are seeing that lesser goldfinches, Anna’s hummingbirds and bushtits are on the rise in the West, and we are still investigating the causes. Northern cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers, and Carolina wrens are expanding their ranges in the East, and scientists think it may be due to climate change. We need everyone’s observations to detect these kinds of large-scale trends in bird populations.”
For more information, go to www.feederwatch.org or call 866-989-2473. Feeder Watch is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada.
But back to the Cornell website. This week’s blogs include topics bird anatomy and the almost impossible task of filming songbirds in flight.
A post by Su Rynard, the director of “The Messenger,” a documentary about songbird declines, featured close-up, slow-motion film of songbirds in flight. It’s one thing to film larger birds raised by hand (2001’s “Winged Adventure,” for instance) but how can the flights of small migrating songbirds be captured?
It was a great idea with a tiny, really tiny, budget. Rynard worked out of her home but had an inspiration: the wind tunnel at the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. It has the world’s first wind tunnel for birds that is capable of simulating high-altitude conditions.
The unusual-looking wind tunnel is capable of simulating atmospheric conditions up to 4 miles of altitude and wind speeds of almost 40 mph, allowing researchers to study how birds cope with migratory demands.
AFAR agreed to film tiny songbirds in artificial nocturnal migration in the tunnel. For the rest of the story, go to www.birds.cornell.edu.
While you’re there, you can learn about a documentary film, “Racing Extinction,” that features a Cornell Lab scientist, Christopher Clark, of the bioacoustics research program.
Or learn about anatomy with Bird Academy’s Virtual Bird. You can target specific areas of a bird to learn the parts, and test yourself in flashcard mode. Or share your bird photographs, browse videos, or sign up for classes.
This site might keep you busy until spring.
What are your favorite bird-related sites?
Hummingbirds: If you’ve quit feeding hummingbirds, you might reconsider for the sake of our year-round residents (usually Anna’s hummingbirds), then use fresh sugar-water.
Gary Clark of Marysville, who has up to seven hummingbirds visit his feeder (one female likes to drink while he’s refilling the bottle), uses the winter recipe of one-third cup of table sugar to one cup of boiling water. That’s a little more sugar than the summer recipe.
Sharon Wootton: www.songandword.com
On the bookshelf
The smile-inducing “A Barrel of Monkeys” is a collection of nouns for animals that makes “herd,” well, boring. What groups of animals might be called a shrewdness, an obstinacy, a rag, a kine or a cowardice?
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