Frequently Asked Questions

We would prefer that you pick a consistent day of the week and time of day to conduct your surveys (such as Sunday mornings or Tuesday afternoons). However, it’s totally fine if you need more flexibility – trust us, we get it. Our schedules are crazy sometimes, too! Just do the best you can to be consistent.

Between work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, and summer travel, we know our volunteers might not be able to survey their site every week. We appreciate you making the time to conduct weekly surveys whenever you are able to.

Absolutely. We are eager to collect data from a wide range of monitoring sites. Some will have bird feeders, others will not. This variety will help us learn more about whether or not resources like bird feeders mediate the effects of air pollution on birds.

We are collecting data via eBird, an online community science platform managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. eBird stores bird observations in checklists. Our volunteers will create one eBird checklist for each 10-minute survey that includes all the birds they observed.

Checklists can be submitted using a web browser or a mobile app. We strongly recommend using the mobile app.

We strongly encourage our volunteers to use the eBird mobile app. However, if you’d prefer to submit your observations using the eBird website, you may do so. Check out this tutorial to learn more, and don’t forget to tag your checklists by adding #ProjectPhoenix to the comments!

Yes, you will need a Cornell Lab account to create and submit your eBird checklists. There is no cost of signing up for an account. The only information required to set up an account is your name and email. You will need to provide a username and password. Click here to set up your Cornell Lab account. For more information about getting started with eBird, check out this how-to guide.

The eBird database contains over one billion records of bird observations – and is growing by the day! To identify checklists submitted as part of Project Phoenix, please tag them by adding #ProjectPhoenix to the comments field.

Project Phoenix collects data from July 1st – November 30th. You’re welcome to start surveys anytime. Just don’t forget to sign up first!

Please conduct a 10-minute survey. (It’s okay if you are a little over, but keep an eye on your stopwatch and aim for 10 to 11 minutes max.)

This protocol will help us ensure that the effort that went into data collection is the same across all checklists. If you’d like to go birding for longer, please submit one complete checklist for each 10-minute interval.

Sure! You are welcome to conduct surveys as often as you’d like. Just be sure to keep your location consistent across surveys and record all the birds you see and/or hear every time.

Yes, that would be awesome! You are a community science superstar. Please register all locations you will monitor for Project Phoenix.

Great question! Merlin Bird ID is a useful tool for beginner and expert birders alike. This app helps you identify birds you observe by sight and/or sound.

Spot a bird? Just answer five simple questions about the bird, and Merlin will generate a list of species that match your description.

Want to know which birds are calling or singing? Start recording, and Merlin will suggest species that match those vocalizations in real time.

Merlin is a great resource to consult on the go and works very well for most common birds, which are the focus of Project Phoenix. However, like all predictive models, Merlin is not perfect, and birders should be mindful when reporting rare birds.

BirdNet is another useful tool that supports birding by ear. We recommend the following best practices when using Merlin Sound ID or BirdNet:

—> Turn your location services on. Neither Merlin nor BirdNet will work well if the apps don’t know where you are and which species are likely to be near you!

—> If Merlin/BirdNet suggests species you have previously observed at your monitoring site, or you know the call or song, go ahead and report that species.

—> If Merlin/BirdNet suggests a species that is new to you, particularly if it is rare, try to confirm the species visually. And remember, you can always report larger taxonomic groups on your checklists if you're not sure (e.g., "finch species" or "hummingbird species").

Great question! Empty checklists are actually super useful. Every survey is a snapshot of bird activity at a particular time and place. If you don’t observe any birds during your 10-minute survey, that tells us that bird activity may be lower in that moment. The power of Project Phoenix is strength in numbers – by comparing bird activity captured by hundreds of community scientists like you, we can start to piece together how smoke and other air pollutants impact bird behavior and species distributions. So, by all means, please do submit a checklist for every survey – even if you didn’t observe any birds!

Check out eBird Essentials, an online course offered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology! This course is available for free to everyone with an eBird account. The course is also available in Spanish.

Sure thing! Ideally, volunteers will survey birds at the same location every week, but our study design allows us to offer flexibility to those who need to choose a different location. To change your site, simply register the new location using the same Google Form you used to register your primary site.

No. When registering your monitoring sites, please only count bird feeders and bird baths that are within view while conducting your surveys.

We are interested in all of the birds that you observe during your surveys! The 20 Neighborhood Birds are meant to act as an introduction to some of the most common birds found in our study area. It is not an exclusive list of birds to record during your surveys.

Although our clocks might "fall back,” birds will continue to time their activities with the rising and setting of the sun. So, should you adjust the time you conduct your weekly surveys? That's up to you! You might prefer to start your surveys one hour earlier, as you may have more light and would be able to observe birds at the same time relative to sunrise/sunset and their activity may therefore be more consistent across your surveys. But, this might not work for your schedule – and that's okay! We will be accounting for changes in sunrise/sunset and other aspects of seasonality in our analysis, and we have many tricks up our sleeve to be sure that we have considered any changes in bird activity due to the times folks conduct their surveys. TL;DR: It's totally your choice!