Opportunities for Birders
To help you access the kind of opportunities you are most interested in, we have split the opportunities into three main sections:
Appreciation
Appreciation opportunities are those that focus primarily on learning and enjoyment to be shared with others. Scattered throughout Alberta, Nature Alberta clubs provide local naturalist programming—field trips, fun counts, study groups, seminars, conferences, festivals and more. If you want to get involved and have some fun, check out a local Nature Alberta club.
Monitoring includes a wide range of bird surveys that would not be possible without the thousands of volunteers who each year, go into the field to observe birds, then record, and submit their data. Your valued contribution is only a checklist away. All the bird monitoring opportunities have sponsors and contacts who can help get you started.
Monitoring protocols are designed to gather different kinds of data. Some of the surveys are more complex and difficult to conduct, requiring well-rounded birding skills, certain expertise, and often special training.
Other surveys are more relaxed and fun and easier to participate in. Here, the monitoring opportunities are organized so the easier fun counts come first, and then progress to the more specialized and rigorous kinds of monitoring—including the Atlas, the Breeding Bird Survey, the Nocturnal Owl Survey, and the newly re-booted Prairie Nest Records Scheme, to mention a few.
Monitoring starts first with the Checklist because it is a foundational tool: the positive identification of a single bird, at a specific location, at a precise time is a viable record.
Records become building-blocks. Individual sightings are recorded on checklists, which are used on outings to favourite haunts, in backyard counts, in fun counts, and in atlases and many other kinds of surveys. Records are the building-blocks of natural history databases. Reliable records are also the contribution naturalists can make to the growing discipline of Citizen Science.
Conservation
Conservation opportunities highlight programs and projects that put a premium on protection and volunteer stewardship of habitat and species. [Under construction.]
Constructive criticism:
If you are aware of other opportunities for volunteers to participate in the appreciation, monitoring or conservation of Alberta's natural heritage, please let us know by Contacting Us
The Nature Alberta would like to thank the Alberta Conservation Association for their generous financial support to Opportunities for Birders.
