In the face of accelerating biodiversity loss, there is a need for widespread public support for conservation efforts. To increase the understanding of biodiversity issues, researchers suggest beginning with the acquisition of species knowledge. However, to optimally support the successful acquisition of species knowledge, influencing factors must…

This feature article presents the basics of birding, or bird watching, and discusses its appeal, especially to serious birders. A section on "citizen scientists" explains organizations that collect data on birds and describes projects they organize. Other sections discuss the legacy of John James Audubon and the bald eagle.

Due to increasing urbanization, wetlands and streams within city limits are being altered, filled in, and degraded. The habitat that remains is critical for providing urban areas with ecosystem services and maintaining biodiversity, yet is often insufficiently monitored by environmental agencies due to a lack of resources. To help fill this void,…

The decline in hummingbird populations and shifts in their movements may adversely affect their role as pollinators and, in turn, plant biodiversity (Allen-Wardell et al. 1998). For example, Hadley et al. (2014) discovered that larger fragments of forest correlated with larger hummingbird populations and more seeds of "H. tortuosa" being…

This article reports on a classroom study of a unit on New Zealand birds that focused on adaptation and conservation in a Year 7 class. The unit used a "context as social circumstances" model. The researchers observed the nine lessons and interviewed students, the classroom teacher, and three other teachers who had taught the same unit.…

Encouraging nonprofessionals to participate in ecological research through citizen science programs is a recent innovation and an effective strategy for gathering ecological information across broad geographical areas. In this paper, we demonstrate how reporting field-based observations through eBird, a citizen-based birding and data-recording…

This paper focuses on the implications of two emerging digital technologies on the act of field birding, and the implications of these objects for thinking about wild birds. While the adoption of new immaterial technologies promises to improve the ease with which birding is practiced, their use leads to new ethical considerations. Using the…

The Building Migratory Bridges (BOMB) program--a collaboration between the Marvel wood School and Audubon Sharon in Connecticut and Conservation Research Education Action (CR EA), a U.S. not-for-profit in Panama--uses nontropical migratory bird research in the United States and Panama to demonstrate how negative environmental impacts in one…