Reporting this kind of information to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's NestWatch can be invaluable in helping scientists tease out interesting things about habitat, timing, and other important elements of nesting. They encourage monitoring, but include on their website information about safe ways to monitor a nest while minimizing disturbing the birds. If you're concerned about people bothering the birds, you can delay contributing your data until the birds have finished.
Thousands and thousands of nest record cards, collected by the Lab for many decades, are slowly but surely being digitized and added to the NestWatch data base. NestWatch is now replacing the cards, which are vulnerable to damage and can only be accessed in paper form until they're digitized. Like most of Cornell's citizen-science projects, there is no cost to submitting records to NestWatch. You can find it at www.nestwatch.org. Best, Laura Erickson Ithaca, NY, but soon to be back home in Duluth For the love, understanding, and protection of birds There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. --Rachel Carson Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
