Birders needed for local monitoring project

Northern flicker in Lake Forest Park
Photo by Lynne Hakim

By Douglas Wacker

Attention birders! The Lake Forest Community Bird Project https://www.lfpbirds.org/ needs your help. 

This long-term monitoring project, coordinated by Dr. Doug Wacker of the University of Washington Bothell in collaboration with the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation, aims to better understand human impacts on the species diversity and behavior of birds that frequent our local parks and green spaces. 

Researchers are finishing their second year of seasonal surveys at 24 sites throughout the Puget Sound region, many in Lake Forest Park, WA, and are initiating a citizen scientist component of their project.

Specifically, bird watchers are needed to walk the survey sites, use Cornell’s eBird app to submit the birds they see and hear on their smartphone, and fill out a short webform letting the researchers know which areas they visited https://lfp-birding-project.webflow.io/get-involved/how-to-help-with-surveys 

The researchers will then aggregate those data and see how their surveys match up with those conducted by local residents. It is particularly important to get surveys from some of the parks that are not normally visited by bird watchers. 

If you’re up for a challenge, you can visit all of the sites. There are 11 in Lake Forest Park, 4 in Seattle, 6 in Eastern King County, and 3 in Snoqualmie Ridge. 

You can find a list of the locations here, https://www.lfpbirds.org/get-involved/survey-locations 

If you’re staying local, only Grace Cole, Horizon View, Whispering Willow, and Lyon Creek Waterfront Parks are currently considered birding hotspots on eBird. 

It would be great to get more observations from the other sites, too! As species distributions change over the year, the researchers would be happy to receive surveys from all seasons.

If you're new to birding and want to help out, start here, https://www.lfpbirds.org/get-involved/new-to-birding