Photo: Antarctic Shag, Sunil Singh/Audubon Photography Awards
Original program date: January 12, 2025
Will Brooks describes how he used eBird data to study birds on glaciers, an enigmatic ecosystem, and birds lost offshore, a rarely observed event. The eBird app has transformed birding and promises to do the same for ornithological research. With 930,000 users and 1.6 billion bird observations, eBird captures rarely observed events that would have been missed by the few observers in a more traditional study. Ebird records, made possible by birders, give researchers the opportunity to tackle new scientific questions, producing new findings. Based on these studies and his perspective as a birder, Brooks provides tips on how you can make your eBirding more useful for science.
Will Brooks has been an avid birder for 18 years. His interest in scientific research emerged in college at the University of Puget Sound, when he discovered that birds were great for studying broader patterns in the natural world. He completed an undergraduate research project studying how song may drive speciation in sparrows before spending a few years gaining field research experience. He now studies bird responses to deforestation in Malaysian Borneo as part of his PhD at University of Puget Sound.