WASHINGTON – Donald Winslow never considered himself a bird-watching enthusiast, but in recent years the favorite pastime of his friends and family rubbed off on him.
For five years, from November to April, Winslow has faithfully documented the number and kinds of birds he sees in his Ocean Pines back yard as a part of Project Feeder Watch.
The project, housed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., recruits people to catalog the bird species they see. The organization uses the information to follow how, where, when, and sometimes why, birds move in the winter.
At his age, the 76-year-old Winslow said, bird-watching is a perfect pursuit.
“This allows me to enjoy the watching of them from my back yard,” he said, “I don’t have to go far and I get to learn a lot about birds.”
Winslow sits quietly in his back yard or just inside his patio doors and watches various bird species dine at his 10 feeders, dip in and out of his pond for baths and display their distinctive personalities — blue jays, for example, are boisterous, he said.
Watchers record how many and which birds they see — made easier thanks to a wall poster provided by the program — and are encouraged to track the birds on consecutive days. To prevent double counting, said David Bonter, the program’s project leader, participants are told to count the maximum number of birds they see each day.
The three most commonly spotted birds in Maryland last year were the dark-eyed junco, Northern cardinal and mourning dove, although about 30-35 species can be found in the area.
Project Feeder Watch began its 19th season Nov. 12. The “entry level” nature of the program, Bonter said, enables amateurs and professionals to participate.
“They’re the eyes and ears of scientists,” Bonter said of program participants.
When an eye disease broke out among house finches in the region in 1994, Bonter said, researchers asked bird-watchers to look out for unhealthy birds. The information the project collected helped them determine how birds were affected by the disease.
Lab researchers used Feeder Watch data to be the first to document cycle changes in the numbers of varied thrush and sudden population shifts in the common redpoll. More recently, the program discovered some species of hummingbirds that usually migrate to tropical climates for the winter are now staying in the Southeast United States.
Last year, 223 Marylanders participated in the program, which costs $12 a year for members of the lab and $15 for non-members.
Unpredictability has kept Thomas Crews tracking the birds for nearly six years.
“Every period that I count it’s like something new,” Crews said. “I might see the same bird, but I might not.”
Crews watches the birds from the sunroom of his Silver Spring home. On an average weekend, he said, he sees five to 10 species. His favorite is the pileated woodpecker, easily identified by the male’s large size, red crest on its head and white throat.
Hawks have been known to swoop down on unsuspecting birds eating in Donald Winslow’s backyard.
“That’s not pleasant,” he said, “but it’s nature.”