Bird Activities For Science!

[Kivia]

I feel like I made a topic before on one of the activities on this site, but perhaps I didn't!

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology currently has two activities up that allow people to help build their new bird identifying tool called Merlin. Merlin uses information collected through these activities to aid in bird identification as it uses the input on how people see certain birds to help ID them.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/labs/

The first activity is called Mark My Bird- you mark certain body parts of the bird and then pick what color(s) are at that spot. You also select the size of the bird and the size of its beak.
The second activity is called the Bird Color Challenge, where an image of a bird is visible for 5 seconds, and then you must pick what color(s) you saw.
Simple, yes? As you can see, they focus mostly on the color of the bird, but this is because it's usually the color of the bird that we rely on to identify it. I hope in the future there will be activities for helping with bird songs, as I believe that's also a very important aspect of bird identification.

If you enjoy birding, then I think you'll enjoy doing these activities a few times- it is going to good use!

[Edme1]

Hmm, that's cool. Thanks! c: I love birds, so that was enjoyable for me.