Nicholas Galea

In this era of information technology, the collection of higher volumes of data, the quicker processing and the access to data, the new channels of communication and the new visual and interactive ways of representing results, are all exciting promises which are greeted with enthusiasm by nature conservationists. One can say that IT has nowadays become a very important tool in the inventory of a researcher or conservationist. Ornithology has always been a highly studied field, partly because birds are very evident and fascinating creatures and because birds are often the first to react to changes in their ecosystems.

One of the most difficult aspects of data collection related to birds, is that observing them and recording their behaviour, takes a large amount of time and distinguishing between one species and another requires a considerable amount of experience. Furthermore, birds often spend most, or part of their lives in highly inaccessible and remote locations. Technology, in the form of digital sensors, can solve this problem and provide large amounts of data remotely.

In the three highly successful EU Seabird Life Projects, BirdLife Malta scientists have used a number of different sensors to study the mysterious life of Malta’s endangered sea bird species. Such species are very difficult to study because they spend most of their life foraging out at sea and when they visit sea cliffs to breed, they only do it at night. To track the movement of such birds during their fishing trips, BirdLife Malta uses geolocators to get accurate readings of where the birds spend their time during the months when they are not breeding. GPS tracking devices are used to get to learn where the birds forage1 when building up their body reserves before laying eggs, incubation and during chick rearing. Thermal imaging cameras are used to film and count birds going in and out of their burrows and to discover new breeding sites. Trail cameras, with a motion sensor and infrared flash, are used to take pictures of birds entering caves and burrows in order to observe the behaviour of breeding pairs in the same burrows.

Another data collection method highly empowered by technology is citizen science2. People can now upload their bird observations and any photos or recordings they capture through their smartphones while in the field. Heavy identification books are being replaced with more interactive and information loaded applications, which apart from providing descriptions can also intelligently filter down a list of species automatically using temporal and geolocation data. Such technologies offer immediate feedback to the person collecting data, motivating volunteers to continue participating in data collecting excursions.

BirdLife Malta made use of citizen science, empowered by technology, in a project named Spot a Sparrow. This project’s aim was to collect information from different towns around Malta and Gozo where sparrows gather to sleep in the evening with the aim of using this data to protect trees in town squares from extensive pruning. Maltese citizens were encouraged to report roosts by simply tapping on a location on a map on their smartphones. By the end of the project, 122 different roosts were mapped by citizens all over Malta and Gozo.

Collecting high volumes of data requires structured and efficient ways of storing such data. Luckily this aspect is probably one of the most addressed within the field of computing, with highly efficient database solutions being readily available on the market. BirdLife Malta has recently completed the long process of digitizing 50 years’ worth of bird ringing3 records. Bird ringing, generates large amounts of data every year. Sharing of data is a fundamental practice in bird studies and as such, bird ringing data, is not only stored locally, but is shared with fellow European ornithological organizations through the population of a central database called the EURING Database.

Collecting data is the initial stage in any research project. Patterns in data are then used to extract results which eventually may prove, or disprove one’s hypothesis. Extracting results from gigabytes of numerical data or even sound recordings and photos is often a very difficult and time-consuming task. Luckily, modelling of data using mathematical formulae has been greatly

Another, and essentially the most important stage in a bird conservation project is the actual dissemination of results. IT and in particular the Internet, has given scientists and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) a myriad of platforms through which they can communicate their findings and tailor their message according