Welcome to the information post about the Mianus River Gorge Preserve’s Citizen Science Project, Who’s Who-Whooing in Your Backyard. This is a fantastic summer project for families throughout the next three months, June-August. It would be wonderful if many Kids Unplugged folks got involved.
MRGP is enlisting residents from Westchester, Putnam, and Fairfield Counties as “citizen scientists” this summer to determine the region-wide distribution of two common owl species–the eastern screech owl (Megascops asio) and the barred owl (Strix varia) along an urban-rural gradient north of New York City.
The project is also looking for evidence of two other species, the great–horned owl (Bubo virginianus) and the saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) though the saw-whet owl is migratory and will be surveyed in the fall-winter seasons.
For more information about these owls visit http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search
Participating in the study couldn’t be easier. Simply email your name, address and phone number to owlcall@mianus.org. You will then receive a password that will enable you to access participant-only parts of the website.
After receiving your password, download the owl calls from the website, burn them onto a cd or an ipod and follow the study guidelines outlined on the Owl Call site (http://www.mianus.org/owlcall/guidelines.html) throughout the summer.
For more information visit http://www.mianus.org/owlcall/index.html
Please post below if you plan to participate and let us know your experiences in the coming months. I think this is going to be very cool!
We will be participating at a local natural area in the Bronx. We plan to do our first survey tomorrow night. This is very cool. My son greatly enjoys the Barred Owl’s call. I highly recommend playing it for the kids.