Back to Birds
	A multi agency project funded by US EPA's STAR Program

Birds are surveyed in 3 ways: listening for calling birds, shoreline surveys to visually see birds, and broadcast surveys for shy birds.

For a calling survey, the researcher stands at a selected point in the study area and listens to bird calls for 10 minutes, plotting on a data sheet all the species heard and their locations during that 10 minutes.

Shoreline surveys consist of identifying birds seen during a 10 minute watch from a good vantage point along the shoreline of the study site. Bird locations are plotted on a map of the study area.

Many marsh birds are quite shy and do not call much. To survey shy birds, researchers broadcast their calls for 5 minutes. The next 10 minutes are spent listening and watching for these birds to reveal themselves. Sometimes the birds are so intrigued by the calls that they come out of hiding and approach the loudspeaker.

Surveying Inland Birds

Birds which don't live right on the Great Lakes shoreline or in a coastal wetland may still be using these habitats. To collect data on these birds, researchers move inland from the shoreline and conduct calling surveys.

The map shows the location of a more inland calling survey (large red dot); the research site is outlined in blue. This particular location is near Superior, Wisconsin; the shoreline is across from the Superior Entrance to the Duluth-Superior Harbor. The bird survey point is on the Nemadji River, which enters the Superior Harbor here.

Although there are many wetlands within this study site, there is also quite a bit of urban and suburban development near the harbor. Thus, researchers often need to conduct calling surveys near houses, business, or port facilities.