A specimen of Atlapetes pallidinucha.Felipe Villegas-Vélez
Adriana Vitolo, a biologist and PhD student at the National University of Colombia, left Bogotá on Friday for Villavicencio, a city 125 kilometers away in the eastern plains, for bird watching throughout Saturday. A car took her to Puerto Gaitán in the afternoon and then she entered a group of civil society sanctuaries known as the Puma Triangle, a place she has been visiting for three years to attend the Global Big Day, a major event the bird watchers participate Every year on the second Saturday in May, around the world they go out to capture birds, which they later add to a platform called eBird.
The first time that Cornell University (USA), the initiator of the project, launched the initiative was in 2015. The world’s largest bird record was recorded in Peru that year and in 2016. But as Carlos Mario Wagner-Wagner and Ana María Castaño, both members of the Global Big Day Coordinating Committee in Colombia, said, in 2017 they decided to organize and remind the world that Colombia is the country with the greatest number of bird species . So they set out on a mission to break the records.
“We started by creating a WhatsApp group with people we knew who were knowledgeable about birds to invite them to bird watch that day,” Castaño recalls. But the group grew and currently there is not only the National Committee but also the G32, a group of representatives in each of the 32 departments of Colombia that mobilizes experts and amateurs to perform during the Global Big Day to report birds across the country, to count and register.
A group of bird lovers observe various specimens in Colombia. With kind approval
Since 2017 – and only with the exception of 2021 – Colombia is the country with the most bird records during the day. A total of 1,536 species were registered in the last year alone, representing 20% of all species entered the platform worldwide that day. Castaño estimates that around 7,000 people joined the campaign at the time.
But the Global Big Day isn’t just a competition in which Colombia, as a bird-rich country, already has an advantage, it’s also a powerful exercise in citizen science. “We are the land of birds, but very few people know about them,” adds Wagner. “We believe that there will be a critical mass of birders in Colombia when it comes to environmental issues.”
Likewise, the data uploaded to eBird can be used to better understand the conservation status of the species, their migration routes or potentially endangered species. “Colombia is due to update its National Bird Conservation Strategy this year, which is a vision for 2030,” adds Castaño. The information collected today can also be an input.
Poster celebrating Global Big Day in Colombia. GLOBAL BIG DAY
You don’t have to be an expert to take part in the “Pajareada”. In fact, they are organized in such a way that for every group of five or six people who go bird watching, there is one person who is knowledgeable about birds, so knowledge flows. However, if this is not the case, questions can be sent via the WhatsApp groups they have formed. “Sometimes there are people who send us an audio recording of the song of the bird they are listening to, for example,” says Wagner. With that, and given the location of the individual and knowing what habitat they are in, many experts can now identify the species to be recorded.
In addition, says Diego Ochoa, Relationship Director at the Humboldt-Institut, behind the eBird platform there is also an “army” of experts, around 2,000 or 3,000 volunteers around the world, who curate the lists of uploaded birds to ensure everything OK. For example, Humboldt has an alliance with Cornell University to adjust and verify the registrations made for eBird in Colombia every day, not just during the Global Big Day.
“For us, it was never about winning, it was about having a world of data that informs conservation decisions that wouldn’t be possible without citizen science.” And that’s exactly what the Global Big Day does, bringing people closer to the art of birdwatching, which is also something scientific.
A specimen of a Blue-fronted Amazilia. Carlos Mario Wagner
This year the national committee invites people to go out with the boys and girls. “Birds are a beautiful group, easy to see, eye-catching, that moves a lot of people,” says Vitolo of the National University, who has been recording since Friday evening. Remember that there are birds such as owls and street watchmen that sing nocturnal songs, and that birds are early risers: at 4:30 they start waking up. Even today, thousands of bird watchers, ornithologists, fans and children do it to watch them flutter.
A group can capture up to 80 birds in one day of the Global Big Day. And everything is prepared for it. In the Puma Triangle, where Vitolo is located, each of the three reserves has up to three birding trails. With BirdFair, the organization run by Wagner, there are already 30 organized groups in the Valle del Cauca. And in Antioquia, says Castaño, there are about 50 more. For her part, she is in Bajo Cauca observing birds directly in a habitat recovering from mining interventions. But that’s not all: the people who will take part in this day in Colombia could be many more.