North American Bird Phenology Program

The North American Bird Phenology Program houses a unique and largely forgotten collection of six million Migration Observer Cards that illuminate migration patterns and population status of the birds of North America. These handwritten cards contain almost all of what was known of bird distribution and natural history from the latter part of the 19th century through World War II. The bulk of the records are the result of the work of a network of observers who recorded migration arrival dates in the spring and fall in a program that, in its heyday, involved 3000 participants. Today, those records are being processed and placed into a modern database for analysis. This information will be used, along with recently collected arrival times of migrant birds, and in conjunction with historical weather data, to examine how bird migration is being affected by climate change. The information from this analysis will provide critical information on bird distribution, migration timing and migration pathways and how they are changing. There is no other program that has this depth of information that can help us understand the effect that global climate change has on bird populations across the continent.