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| OVERVIEW: Bird monitoring initiatives by citizen scientists have been active in the Chicago region for over two decades. In the past, a lack of standardized protocols and the daunting task of entering reams of data into digitized files has meant that much if not all of the information amassed over the past years remained largely inaccessible and difficult to analyze. In a 1998 effort - spearheaded by Judy Pollock, Alan Anderson, Terry Schilling, Lee Ramsey, and Elizabeth Sanders of the Bird Conservation Network (BCN), with major participation from a group of dedicated birders, scientists, land managers and conservationists including Jerry Garden (Chicago Audubon Society), Jerry Sullivan (Cook County Forest Preserve District), Doug Stotz (Field Museum), Stephen Packard (Audubon - Chicago Region) and Dan Niven (Illinois Natural History Survey) - a standardized protocol for bird monitoring was implemented which transformed monitoring practices and resolved central difficulties. Instant publication and analysis of this data via the world wide web became a reality in 2001 when Cornell Lab of Ornithology's BirdSource teamed up with the BCN and the Field Museum to unveil a new web site. This site came about thanks to the efforts of Debby Moskovits and Doug Stotz (Field Museum), Terry Schilling, Lee Ramsey, Alan Anderson and Suzanne Checchia (BCN volunteers), Steve Kelling and Michael Brutvan (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) and Judy Pollock, Rickie White and Steve Frankel (Audubon-Chicago Region). In 2003, the database moved to a special BCN version of the eBird website, a nationwide side for data entry managed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. This move provided easier access to data for research purposes and casual observation, and also allowed monitors to easily enter their sightings at any of the predefined birding hot spots in the Chicagoland area. The database has grown to include about 100,000 records including point count data, transect data, and casual observations gathered by BCN Census monitors as well as volunteers for forest preserve districts and other land managers. Funding for this project has come from Chicago Wilderness, National Audubon Society, The Field Museum, and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Non-Game Wildlife Small Projects Fund. In 2005, enough data had been collected to prompt the Bird Conservation Network (BCN) to seek out a more in depth analysis of the database. Audubon - Chicago Region (Regional office of the National Audubon Society) teamed up with Bird Conservation Network to jointly fund the project and to contract a consultant for the project. Eric Secker (Piazza Design) was contracted to research methods, analyze the database, and create graphs and webpages highlighting the results. This website is the main result of our efforts. We have attempted to analyze the database in a manner that is as credible and professional as possible - through research and consultation with statisticians, ornithologists, and other professionals. At the same time, we have attempted to create a site that is simple enough to be easily used and understood by casual birders without backgrounds in statistics. We are very excited about our results and confident in our methods. Nonetheless, this analysis was not performed by a professional statistician and limited funding prevents us from analyzing the database in a manner that is comparable to other larger scale censuses and bird counts. Also, with only eight years of point count data available, the results presented here only provide a preliminary look at the trends of species in the Chicago Wilderness Region. Please take these items into consideration when viewing the site. As additional years of data are obtained, we plan to revisit and reanalyze the database in an effort to refine the trends presented here. We welcome any input or suggestions that will help us improve the site or possible future analyses of the database. For more details regarding the limitations of this analysis, please see the Methods page. --Eric Secker,
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