Researchers at the University of Washington are using data collected by ordinary citizens to monitor birds and beaches along the Pacific coastline. That means someone’s out there handling a lot of dead seabirds.
Barbara Patton is one of many of those citizens volunteering. On a typical outing, she scans the beach. She’s looking for signs of dead birds: a feather sticking straight up, dark colors in the sand, odd seaweed clumps. Minutes later, she and her husband encounter the first of three dead birds they’ll find that morning.
Experience tells them it’s a murre, a type of auk that is a bit like a penguin. But the Pattons follow proper procedure to identify the species: eyes gone, feet flexible. They measure the wing, bill, and other body parts and photograph it. They note exactly where they found it.
The Pattons and others in the citizen monitoring program send their findings to a massive database kept by the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST. Combined with data from satellites and other surveys, citizen patrols provide information not available any other way. “The data that the participants collect is invaluable,” says Julia Parrish, head of Washington’s environmental program. The data reveals patterns about where and when certain species die.
Lately, the data has shown that seabirds are dying more often and in bigger groups. Researchers say unusual mortality events have occurred from California to the Arctic Circle four years in a row.
Seabirds spend most of their time feeding and living at sea. They venture on land only to breed or nest. But now many birds are dying close to shore. Researchers think warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures have jumbled the birds’ ecosystem—causing them to come ashore more often.
COASST volunteers are helping search for clues. They hope to identify die-offs faster. Hundreds of volunteers comb stretches along the U.S. West Coast each month looking for carcasses. Since 1998, they’ve recorded nearly 76,000 dead birds.
“It doesn’t bother us to handle these dead birds,” one volunteer says. “We’re just monitoring the cycle of life.”
Volunteers aren’t the only ones recording bird deaths. A loving Creator-God notes each bird that falls—and counts you and me as worth far more. (Matthew 10:29-31)
