With our annual documentation of avian migration, organized Christmas Bird Counts, hawk watches, and state records committees, birders can rightly claim to have been at the forefront of Community-Science (a.k.a. Citizen-Science). The advent and phenomenal growth of eBird – one of the largest crowd-sourced projects in science today – likewise demonstrates the commitment of the birding community to the democratization of scientific knowledge. But birders can benefit by using similar resources for non-avian taxa.

In this presentation, Jennifer Rycenga will describe the special skills that birders bring to the community-science world, and the ways that learning about other taxa can help improve your birding skills. The program will focus on the uses of iNaturalist in particular, and how contributions you make to that database are distinct and complementary to your eBird contributions. Specifically, since Jennifer has family ties to the Rochester area, she will suggest particular directions for using iNaturalist locally to aid in the understanding of habitat, the encouragement of youthful budding scientists, and the charting of change over time through exploration of patches, bio-blitzes, and iNaturalist projects.

Look for the Zoom link in your email a few days prior to the meeting. The Zoom Room will open at 6:45 PM.  Don’t wait until the last minute to sign on, you might be left out!

Jennifer Rycenga is President of the Sequoia Audubon Society in San Mateo county, California, as well as being a long-time member of RBA! She has been birding for over thirty-five years; her proudest anomaly is having recorded at least one life bird in each of the fifty states. She co-launched the now-flourishing Queer Birders of North America (QBNA) back at the beginning of the twenty-first century. As a writer, she has published articles in Birding and Bay Nature magazines, and edits the online site guide for San Mateo County, http://birding.sequoia-audubon.org/ .  A recognized high-level participant in Community-Science, she has co-organized an ongoing series of Bio-Blitzes with the San Mateo County Parks system.  When not birding, she is a professor of Humanities at San José State University, and scholar of the Abolitionist era in American history. When they are not at home tending to the persistent needs of their two indoor cats, Jennifer is outside naturalizing and birding with her wife Peggy Macres.