This coming Saturday 13th April is Citizen Science Day, an ‘annual event to celebrate and promote all things citizen science’. Here at the Zooniverse, one of our team members will be posting each day this week to share with you their favourite Zooniverse projects. Today’s post is from Laura Trouille, co-PI for Zooniverse and VP of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
To follow on Sam’s Monday post kicking off this series and her mention of the diversity of approaches and models for citizen science, I thought it would be fun and helpful to highlight Hawk Talk, a project co-created by citizen scientists and researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
During the summer of 2018, a group of volunteers spent weeks observing the Red-tailed Hawk cam, brainstorming questions about what they were seeing, and ultimately voting on a question to investigate:
Do hawks use different kinds of calls in different situations at the nest?
Previous researchers have documented Red-tailed Hawk vocalizations, but have been mostly limited to what they can hear on the ground or when briefly checking a nest. The 24/7 Red-tailed Hawk cam gives the community the chance to document vocalizations right at the nest without disturbing the birds!
Join them at Hawk Talk for this first round of clips in which you will look at the first week of footage after the nestlings start to hatch.
We also invite you to learn more about the Bird Cams Lab, the larger project that Hawk Talk is a part of. Click here to help test new activities for co-created research investigations.
Almost every day, the Hawk Talk team posts in the project’s announcement banner. Sometimes they direct you to a specific clip to help figure out what is going on. Other times they let you know about exciting news happening on the live Red-tailed Hawks cam.
The team also posts the number of classifications received on the previous day and encourages continued participation. Help them increase the daily number of classification from ~200/day to more!
The greater the participation, the more quickly the citizen scientists and researchers can use these data to answer their question. This is a wonderful example of citizen scientists engaged in all steps of the research process. Join the Hawk Talk community and help make it a success!
Go straight to Hawk Talk or to the Zooniverse portal for Bird Cams Lab, where you can find both Hawk Talk and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s other project, Battling Birds.
Thank you!
Zooniverse 