A Webcast of Bird Nesting as a State-of-the-Art Citizen Science

<div><p>The quality of people’s knowledge of nature has always had a significant influence on their approach to wildlife and nature conservation. However, direct interactions of people with nature are greatly limited nowadays, especially because of urbanization and modern lifestyles. As a result, our isolation from the natural world has been growing. Here, we present an example of a state-of-the-art Citizen Science project with its educational, scientific, and popularizing benefits. We conclude that modern media and new forms of education offer an effective opportunity for inspiring children and others to have fun learning to act like scientists. This approach provides broad opportunities for developing the hitherto neglected educational potential of Citizen Science.</p></div

An example of a “bird book” created by schoolchildren.

<p>An example of a “bird book” created by schoolchildren.</p

An example of a state-of-the-art Citizen Science project, with direct benefits for the public and for researchers.

<p>An example of a state-of-the-art Citizen Science project, with direct benefits for the public and for researchers.</p

A Webcast of Bird Nesting as a State-of-the-Art Citizen Science - Fig 3

<p>An example of data collected from the nest of a great tit (<i>P</i>. <i>major</i>) during the nesting period (i.e., from April 19 to May 23) documenting (A) the structure of the diet delivered by tit parents to nestlings (the proportions and the number of items are shown); (B) the total number of arrivals (green area), feeding deliveries (grey area), and the removal of droppings (violet area) by bird parents, including the mean daily temperature outside the nest box (black line) and inside the nest box (red line); (C) the mean daily number of arrivals, feeding deliveries, and removals of droppings by bird parents in a 6-minute period between 5 am and 7 am, including the mean daily temperature outside and inside the nest box (box: mean; whiskers: SE). For detailed information, see <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001132#pbio.2001132.s003" target="_blank">S2 Text</a> and <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001132#pbio.2001132.s007" target="_blank">S4 Data</a>.</p

Dataset S1 from Equilibrium dynamics of European pre-industrial populations: the evidence of carrying capacity in human agricultural societies

Excel file containing all data we used