LOS ANGELES — Once called bird watchers, many who are interested in the feathered friends across local cities now prefer the term, birder – if only because much of the time one hears a bird species before actually seeing it.

Observations done by birders are currently helping bolster ornithological data sets on websites like Ebird, where ordinary citizens can log what they see, and hear in urban areas.

Crowdsourced science, gathered by sites like Ebird, was an integral part of a recent study conducted between ornithologists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and researchers at University of California Los Angeles.

The study was recently published in Frontier in Ecology and Evolution, and looks at how birds adapt and react in the local urban environments.

The Natural History Museum’s Allison Shultz took part in the study which used two recent data sets for comparison.

Shultz said observing birds is one of the most accessible things locals can do.

“I could walk out my door and see so many different species of birds all around me rather than having to go out into some wilderness area,” said Shultz.

Shultz explained that LA County is home to the largest variety of bird species in the nation, and now anyone can report their birder observations on Ebird.

“We're really excited to incorporate the community into our science and have people like yourself go out and take observations that we use in our research,” Shultz explained.

One of the study's findings is that birds who typically nest on structures in the wild do well in the city, whereas those that nest in cavities, say, inside trees, have more difficulty.

According to Shultz, the study also looked at a species’ abundance increase or decrease over time. The study looked at how species become more urbanized or less urbanized. Further, the study looked at traits of species that are associated with living in urban environments.

Kimball Garrett is in charge of over 120,000 bird specimens at the museum, as well as making sure the large quantity of LA County birder data reported online is accurate. 

“We usually have an interaction with the observer,” said Garrett. “We check to see whether they provided sufficient detail to confirm the sighting, and very often we just can't admit those into the research database.”

Although the Natural History Museum's ornithology wing remains closed for now due to the pandemic, Shultz explained that Angelenos can observe and report a surprising number of bird species just by stepping outside and the richness of the data is increasing in part due to better reporting tools online.

“One of the biggest changes is not the birds themselves but the number of people observing birds has actually changed,” said Shultz.

As our urban areas continue to expand, Shultz explained that studies like hers can be used to redefine what success is for our cities and which species are sharing in that success.