Abstract
BackgroundIn the past decades, birdwatching as a hobby developed rapidly and produced ample scientific records that have aided conservation efforts. Therefore, it is increasingly attractive to promote avian research by providing data from birdwatching.MethodsWe compared records from 16 years of community birdwatching and a 1-year formalized bird monitoring in Suzhou, China to study the similarities and differences between the two monitoring methods.ResultsWe showed that within the 325 bird species recorded by the two methods, an annual average of 108 species were documented by community science and 223 bird species were recorded by 1-year formalized monitoring. Measured by the number of bird species recorded per survey trip, the bird monitoring activity of community birdwatchers was significantly lower. Furthermore, the monitoring intensity of community birdwatching measured as the average survey trips per site each survey year was also lower than that of formalized bird monitoring. In addition, community birdwatchers preferred urban landscapes to rural areas.ConclusionsCommunity birdwatching could record the majority of local birds and complements the professional surveys in avian research. Well designed and coordinated community science can be used to expand the knowledge about avian distribution and population dynamics. These findings are critical for the development of conservation science with regard to community involvement.
Highlights
In the past decades, birdwatching as a hobby developed rapidly and produced ample scientific records that have aided conservation efforts
By combining professional survey and community birdwatching records, 325 bird species were recorded in Suzhou
Some 203 bird species were recorded by both professional survey and community birdwatching
Summary
In the past decades, birdwatching as a hobby developed rapidly and produced ample scientific records that have aided conservation efforts. Coupled with the rapid development of information technology, such as social networking and messaging platforms, volunteers from different countries and different fields can effectively carry out simultaneous scientific research and monitoring, further highlighting the value of community science (McKinley et al 2017). Data from community science can be used to generate long-term trends that could complement data from traditional surveys, and the research on avian species distribution, population dynamics, response to climate change, and the conservation of avian distribution hotspots could be strengthened using community data (Crick 2010; Hochachka et al 2012; Walker and Taylor 2017; Hong et al 2018; Horns et al 2018)
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