Have you ever wanted to live the life of a wildlife biologist?

Well, you don't have to have a degree in biology to make a contribution to the scientific Community will take a look at how you can become a citizen scientist next on Georgia Outdoors.

funding for Georgia, Outdoors has been made possible by a grant from Mary Hall, Singleton, and by the Emily Foundation, Birds.

And insects are an essential part of a healthy ecosystem.

Wildlife, biologists.

Spend a lot of time tracking changes in populations and migration patterns but you don't have to be a wildlife biologist to study birds.

Bird watching is a growing Pastime and many birders are becoming citizen scientists using their skills to make a contribution to our knowledge of the species.

Volunteers participate in bird and butterfly accounts across the country each year, but it all starts with a healthy curiosity and a good pair of binoculars, a great place to get acquainted with birding is at an event like this one, the colonial Coast, birding Festival held every October on Jekyll Island.

This is the Georgia, Colonial Coast birding in nature festival and it's built around the Georgia, Colonial Coast, birding Trail.

This is our fourth year.

It's amazing.

How excited people get when they find out about how wonderful, the Georgia coast is such a unique place to come because it has a good combination of salt.

Marsh ocean, a little culture, a little history and a lot of birds.

The Rookery exhibit hall is a good place to browse feel.

God's try out the latest equipment and congregate with fellow birders.

What they were going to go have some fun but the festival doesn't end here got it outings to birding hotspots around the Georgia Coast or a major attraction is only three Bridges out to Barrier Islands on the Georgia coast.

One out to tivey, went out to st. Simons and one out to Jackal.

So we provide trips to Blackbeard Island Safa.

Low sinker Catherines ossabaw, we also take people into the Okefenokee Swamp.

October is a great time for birding on the coast.

No, wonder the organizers picked this time of year for the colonial Coast.

Birding Festival.

In addition to the species that are here, year-round migratory birds are making their way south for the winter and Jekyll Island.

Is a great location for the festival's on bass though.

The smallest of Georgia's Barrier Islands.

It's accessible by bridge and contains a variety of well-preserved, habitats.

Gene, khafre leads a popular field.

Trip right here.

On the island Jekyll Island is one of the best birding spots in Georgia.

It's a nice Barrier island that you can drive to and it has a variety of habitats.

So, this is a great place for our festival and a great place to go bird-watching.

I like a challenge and birding, is a challenge.

I am a kind of person who likes to explore new habitats and new things.

And this is a way of looking and exploring new.

New places, is to look for new birds and new places.

Colonial Coast.

Birding Festival is named for the colonial Coast, birding Trail more than 300, species of birds have been spotted over the 18 sites that form the trail.

The colonial Coast birding Trail is an effort by the Department of Natural Resources in conjunction with a number of Co-operators, to try to enhance birding opportunities along the Georgia coast.

And we have selected 18 of the very best places for people to bird along this area.

Each one is different.

Each one has its own plants and animals and We think that people both Georgians and visitors to our state will have some fantastic tourism opportunities right along the Georgia coast that they may not have known were there.

The trail features historic sites such as harmful, Broadfield, Plantation and Port McAllister, as well as valuable natural resources, like the Okefenokee Swamp attendees.

At the festival, learned the ins and outs of bird watching from a number of experts on hand to share their knowledge.

So you had your chickadee calling.

We got black and white or blue coming in.

It's got a little dark around the eyes.

Let me these volunteers are getting a taste of bird banding and approach to population.

Ring used by Wildlife, biologists all over the world.

A unique band is placed on the leg of an individual birds, but the birds must be handled with the utmost care.

This helps biologist keep records on movement and population changes, and allows for better management and protection of the species.

This is the 28th year of operation for this banding station.

We're here every year, basically, for three weeks.

We've selected.

What we perceive as the prime time to be here for the migrating.

Warblers very O's sparrows, all types of sun birds, migrate through this area, the Jekyll Island, banding station, attracts, all sorts of volunteers.

On the average, the volunteer it could be anybody, we have MDS, we have Carpenters, we have sales people.

We do have our requirements, and who we allow to handle the birds, they have to be trained.

They have to meet our criteria.

There are jobs here to do that.

Don't involve actually handling the birds.

8 .3 G, our dad is directly fed to the Bandon laboratory in Patuxent Maryland which is part of the US Geological Survey you want to release it.

Besides the colonial Coast birding Festival, there are many other birding events in Georgia.

One of the newest occurs in the spring and it's just for kids, the youth, birding competition, this Statewide event involves teams across Georgia, with one goal in mind spot as many species as they can.

In one day, the youth burning competition is an event that gives kids an opportunity to compete against each other as teams.

So they get together with their friends or fellow students.

And they work as a as a group to identify birds traveling from Habitat to Habitat.

There he goes.

We met up with a group of students from the Darlington school in Rome over the course of the day.

They'll work their way from Rome, all the way to Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center and there's no time to waste.

It was still dark outside when we started.

So we focus mainly on the bird songs versus actually seeing the birds.

And then as it got lighter, we were able to Use our binoculars and the scope and actually see some birds, the king mern, no trees.

While they're so cute.

It's really pretty simple.

The identification is supposed to be left up to the kids.

It's their responsibility to find the birds who identify the birds as a team.

Welcome American crumbs.

Good American.

American Crew.

We saw applying were born.

Remember I'm looking for, they can talk amongst themselves and sort of debate back and forth what they think it is and then they have to come to a consensus before they put it on the official list, it sticks out there on the bottom, right?

We got a good feeling, that's the old breast of chat.

We took both of our groups today for the burden competition.

I have a seven-year-old group to seven-year-olds in a six-year-old we took that group and we took a group of Five eighteen year olds, the teams begin their day at Georgia.

Highlands College a campus with a diversity of habitats.

They have a nice Lake behind their campus and underneath that Lake.

Where the, with the Overflow is, there's a wetland and that Wetland has been dammed up by beavers, may have a nice Boardwalk that goes right through the whole swamp, where you can see lots of different migratory Birds, lots of other Wetland wildlife and wetlands.

Like this offer, a lot of dead trees because the Or drowns, the roots and kills the trees.

When beavers come in, they provide not only in aquatic habitat but they provide a lot of Nest sites for other birds, including tree, swallows bluebirds, and lots of different kinds of woodpeckers.

Wetlands tend to be good for several reasons.

One reason is because there's a lot of insect food there and at what makes them a good birding location is because they tend to have few big trees and so therefore we get to see the birds lower down and closer up verbs that we're seeing today are basically A lot of Warblers red-winged blackbird and birds of prey, and things like that.

We saw the Indigo Bunting and it's just such a beautiful bird.

It's got this.

Amazing.

It was so cool to see because I never thought I would ever see one.

We've seen a lot of Warblers which are really hard to find.

We've tried a lot to find those.

We've had several tests over them with different pictures to identify.

You can't find.

I'm just curious and that's what it was.

Common yells, were boy, was the female.

We've also found some woodpeckers, we found a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker and those are always fun to watch.

Birds can be hard to spot an even harder to correctly.

Identify identify Vacation often requires knowing what birds look like and what they sound like as well.

The group uses a program called bird, pod downloaded to an MP3 player to call in birds.

With this new technology, birdwatchers can carry bird songs from hundreds of species right in their pockets.

We use the recorded bird sounds to try to lure birds in and mimic their calls.

And we thought that would be either a, a great tool to confirm bird calls that we did here, or try to lower Birds to flush them out, or even bring them in.

This technique can be very helpful in calling out Birds.

You wouldn't normally see, however, using bird calls to lure end Birds.

Should be done sparingly as it could agitate, and confuse the birds, So far so good, the morning isn't over.

And the teams have already identified more than 50 species of birds.

Nestled in the hills of North Georgia stretching over more than 28,000 Acres.

Berry College is the largest contiguous campus in the world and its diversity of habitats provides great.

Birding opportunities.

Barry is so beautiful.

If you've ever been out there it's just there's so much Wildlife.

Once you are introduced to the different types of birds is so neat to see what you can find bird.

Watching is interesting because you're able to get out in the outdoors.

It's kind of like you have a you have a certain objective or Mission that you're trying to accomplish rather than just going out and looking at things, there's different levels of birding and so it's kind of challenging I like burning because well one reason is it's fun and the second reason is it's really cool and when you see the birds, it's really cool.

My favorite birds that I saw today.

We're the ones in the lake.

I think there was a Canadian geese.

Let's all the babies.

It look like yellow brown chicks.

I like bowling with my friends, I like seeing the weathering backbone, I like the way through Blackboard, because, although blackboards are black, but the legend in Blackboard as well, and you don't want to swing.

All right, I did a competition as a good motivator but the real reward of bird-watching runs much deeper for this group.

I tell myself that sort of my underlying motive here is to make them appreciate The environment.

I've taught a course in environmental science for a long time and and you can feed the kids.

All kinds of information about how we need to save the environment and how we need to recycle and how we need to save water.

But really the best route toward a healthy environmental ethic is to allow them to see things in nature, learn about them and eventually love them.

And when they do that, then their appreciation for nature is already there after adding a few more birds.

Through their list, the team's recount their progress in Rome.

All right guys, it looks like we're doing great with the with the songbirds.

There's a few easy things we still haven't seen that.

I hope we could pick up should be able to get some of the egrets.

Like the great egret, we should be able to get a few ducks and we don't have to turn in our list until 6:00 if we get there with some time to spare.

There's a lot of woods there and we can just go and see if we can pick up those last few species while we're there.

Now, it's time to hit the road and try to make it to Charlie Elliott before the 6 p.m. deadlines.

We saw one at Charlie Elliott, the group keeps burning to the very last minute.

There's to the high school kids have racked up an impressive number of species, more than 75.

And the younger group has also fared quite well, positively identifying more than 20 different species of birds not bad.

We've been working all year For this with learning different birds.

And so, it really just comes down to today.

Nobody truth now that the burden is done, it's time for the teams to check in and register their lists, we had a large checklist written up on the wall for kids to add all the species that they found.

We gave them their t-shirts and their checklist of Georgia Birds.

I think we did.

Well, we may not have won, but we tried our best and that's all that really counts in the end.

We got a chance to use the knowledge that we've been working on all year and it was great at, Charlie, Elliott the group, they're treated to a bird of prey show and soon, after it's time for the awards judging is conducted by age group.

The teenagers fared quite well, but came in just under the winning count but the seven and eight-year-olds win the prize for Age group.

The king lives with 22, birds come on down, piglets for both teams, it's an impressive.

Start to a long career.

Birding, we had 180 species found in this group in the state of Georgia.

Today, I give yourself a hand Organized birding events, offer a great introduction to the world of bird.

Watching the longest-running widest, reaching such event is the Christmas bird count.

It's a cold December morning at the rum Creek, wildlife management, area near Forsyth and this group is ready to see some birds.

The Christmas bird counts have been going for 105 or 106 years now.

It's the longest running citizen science project out there.

It started right around the 1900s.

And the basic way that their run is that each count is a center point and then it's a seven and a half mile radius Circle drawn around that point.

So it's a circular count.

They started with a few orange around 1900 and now there's close to 30 or maybe even more than that, just in the state of Georgia.

I think the Christmas bird count is an ideal example of Citizen science.

You think about the thousands of pairs of eyes that are looking for Birds across the country.

There's no way that That the u.s. government any state agency, any private conservation group could ever pay for that?

Kind of survey.

Now, I always used to go out with my dad like hunting and fishing and stuff like that, and I just like being outdoors bird-watching was a good place to meet up with people.

Like that kind of stuff good.

Excuse to go out.

I do it because I enjoy obviously looking at the birds through birding.

I've gotten to know quite a few people from around different parts of the state.

That's just a delightful way to go out and see the birds enjoy nature and spend the day with friends.

Rum Creek offers a lot of bird watching opportunities.

The rum Creek Wildlife Management Area is adjacent to Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge which holds 35,000 Acres of protected forest habitat through green wings.

The Piedmont area through Georgia.

You don't have any mountains, is there anything here but you've got so many rivers and lakes.

There's reservoirs of all kinds and but because of all these rivers and such it brings in a great diversity of these different birds.

We see a lot of waterfowl in this area Ducks all different kinds of ducks and if we're fortunate will see some Hawks and some Eagles, and some wild turkeys, the group counts all day, and once the sun goes down, the numbers are tallied to be combined with other counts across the country, red-throated loon, 45 as a new kind of record, a lot of different learning activities that go on through the year but nothing compares with the Christmas bird.

Count II think that if I had to compare Any other sporting event would have to be the World Series.

Indeed, it is the world series of birding that's held every December.

If you enjoy bird watching and want to make a contribution to the scientific Community, there are many citizen science projects to get involved with.

Here are a few, the great backyard bird.

Count happens over a four-day period, each winter.

Usually in February participants count birds for as little as 15 minutes a day and Report their findings to a National Database project.

Feeder watch is a winter long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards nature Center's Community areas and The cows in North America.

Feeder Watchers, periodically count the highest number of each species.

They see at their feeders from November through early April, eBird dot, org is an online resource.

That allows anyone with an interest in Birds to submit observations and retrieve data.

On bird populations across the country for links and information on these and other citizen science projects visit w-w-w dot birth.

Source.com Like birds butterflies attract.

A lot of attention from folks who enjoy the outdoors and a group of Citizen scientists have stepped up to the task of helping to document them each year.

Hundreds of butterfly accounts are held across the country.

The North American butterfly Association hosts, 11 counts in Georgia alone.

One of the most popular counts is held every summer at the monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers the count.

So includes nearby Arabia Mountain and Finola mountain.

And it's led by father Francis, Michael Abbot of the monastery.

Looks like we might get a little rain this morning, but it didn't stop us last year.

Normally the butterfly, can't we start at 8:30 in the morning.

And includes the monastery.

Panola mountain and Arabia Mountain and all the distance in between those three points.

For the first five years, we stayed together as a single group today for the First time we broke into three groups to see if we could see more diverse butterflies.

This is a beautiful Tiger Swallowtail on purple coneflower.

The monastery Arabia Mountain and Panola Mountain are part of an area recently.

Designated a national natural heritage area, indicating the natural and historic significance of the region, the diverse habitats contained within.

And between these three locations is a great place to see butterflies Even on a wet Summer Morning such as this, these beautiful bugs can be found everywhere.

I was a long time birdwatcher.

So you're out in nature a lot and you see these little bugs flying around and I got interested to see what I could have done.

If I bird-watching and Butterfly watching its same type of individuals so verbena is at least producing some of our grass.

Skippers.

I today's butterfly count considering the weather which has been raining even so I believe we're up to about 38 species or something like that.

39, species for the morning, our average is 53 and so hopefully we'll make our average the butterfly account attracts people from different skill levels and backgrounds.

This is my first butterfly count.

I was really looking forward to it and wanting to do it.

The last couple of years, and finally met the time to do it, I've just always been a naturalist at heart.

I've had a great day, it's all some good brownish-gray.

I was this big yellow marking in here.

This is the common wood nymph.

My children used to call them fried, egg butterflies while I'm an entomologist by training.

I have been interested in butterflies all my life, George and only has about a hundred sixty five species of butterflies.

So if a little bit of effort, you know, anybody can learn the butterflies that George.

It's a nice group of organisms to work with butterflies are also good indicators of the state of the environment.

So, it looks like a bunch of Tiger swallowtails.

You know, the butterfly population is part of the whole Global Network.

All of the stuff is connected.

That's why I think it's so important to watch the butterflies and so I think that's that's the bottom line of it is that we have to protect nature.

Another growing hobby among nature.

Lovers is dragonfly watching, and if you're interested in these fascinating insects, Charlie Elliott nature Center's.

Dragonfly, education program is a great introduction.

Charlie Wildlife Center is a sixty Four Hundred Acre Wildlife Management Area, Public fishing area and education center.

The dragonfly ID program is something we hold every year.

It's very popular.

Are lots of folks that are interested in birds of also become interested in dragonflies and since we have 22, lakes and ponds here, they're very abundant and it this place makes a great setting for a class like that.

That's a Rosy.

It skimmer gift.

Beaten a renowned birder and naturalist leads the class author of several popular books on birding in Georgia.

He recently compiled a comprehensive book on dragonflies and damselflies of the southeast with a day job.

As a pilot GIF is one of the Most active citizen scientists in the state.

Well, when I was a kid, I was really big in a fishing and I like to fish a lot and more than a lot of other little kids.

So I just found a couple of adults who didn't mind me tagging along and one of them literally knew everything he knew.

All the flowers, all the trees, all the snakes, all the fish, all the birds.

So I kind of got interested in classifying things of over 5,000, species of dragonflies and damselflies on Earth, Georgia is home to about And in 72 dragonflies and damselflies.

Share, many similar characteristics but dragonflies are generally larger.

Another easy way to tell the two apart is by their wings damselflies rest with their wings folded while dragonflies extend both pairs when resting.

And if you have binoculars a little thing you can do with them, is you can turn them backwards and use them like a little magnifying glass.

I, this is kind of a general program for Beginners.

It's for people who maybe don't know that much about dragonflies and damselflies.

We get a lot of interesting questions especially from the kids.

See some folks talk about this disease that's going around called nature deficit disorder.

We feel like it's real important to get kids connected to Nature early on because they'll be always able to enjoy the outdoors for the rest of their lives.

This one is just changed from being a female.

It's wonderful really.

I'd recommend it for everybody learned a lot about.

Out the life stages in the class and I'm trying to learn how to knit these.

There's so much variety, you can never get bored, whether you're a beginner or whether you've been studying dragonflies for years, in the summer dragonflies are plentiful and their populations can be important environmental indicators.

Basically, almost any wet habitat can be utilized by some type of draganflyer damselfly.

And unfortunately, Georgia is such a fast growing state that we're Losing a lot of those habitats.

It's just going to be really important in the next 50 or 100 years to try to preserve the habitats that we have left and that pretty citizen science.

It can be an important part of an appreciation of nature.

There's a lot of things we can do as sort of non-professionals to add to the advancement of a particular study, try to just help the professionals because there's frankly not enough of them in order to ensure the future health of wildlife populations.

Is the work of individuals like these is an invaluable tool.

So why not get out there and become a citizen scientist yourself?

All it takes is a little knowledge and a drive to make a contribution to your world.

funding for Georgia, Outdoors has been made possible by a grant from Mary Hall Singleton, And by the Emily Foundation.