Welcome! I’m Saranya and I’m excited to share with you guys a walkthrough of my bird-watching journey. I’ve always had a passion for birds since childhood in which I would place bird seeds in my backyard, just to see the different types of birds that would arrive. A while before I’ve taken this course, I had the consideration of trying bird watching this summer by visiting various parks and doing some photographing. I honestly never thought that I would end up having the opportunity to actually do this, especially for this course and a part of the volunteering experience which makes it even better! It feels great to know that I’m giving some sort of impact on a citize science project by helping them out and offering the data that is needed. So speaking of the project, let me explain to you what’s it all about. 

The whole point of Celebrate Urban Birds is to record any birds that were spotted in a park each week. The website has a preference of 16 focal species, but I am also allowed to record other various birds too. I basically do the recordings for three separate days a week, ten minutes in each visit, and also at the same time for each of the ten minutes. After the final day of recording and submitting data, I choose a new park for the next week and repeat the process. Since it is summer, going in the early mornings is the best time to look for birds (this is between 7 am to 11 am) because they would be up early to search for food. Therefore, all of my observations (and pictures that were taken) were from 9:40 to 9:50 in the morning. Also, the bird watching area matters to the project too; my observation area has to be 50 by 50 feet, so that’s technically the size of half a basketball court. Usually when I visit a new park, what I would do is reach about fifteen minutes early on the first day, look around to see which areas have more bird sightings, and then choose the best spot and begin recording by the time 9:40 comes. It may seem quite a bit of work, but the good thing about this is that not only do I get a lot of fresh air and a morning walk, but I also get to see a lot of new parks and observe at least a new cool bird each week!

Lastly, I carried a bit of equipment along with me (they’re all optional, but highly worth the experience). Here’s a list of what I used throughout the completion of this project:

• My camera: to photograph and share with you all the birds I found 
• Bird seeds: useful for more bird attraction 
• My phone: to note down all the birds that I see while at the park so I won’t forget after coming home and adding the data to the website + to use the Merlin Bird ID app to ID any birds I don’t recognize (cool fact, this app was made by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology too!) 

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