Current Projects
In addition to the trips we lead, the Princeton Birding Society aims to be an active part of the Princeton conservation and ecological community. We currently have a number of active projects running to help birds on campus and beyond. Below are a couple of examples of what we are currently doing.
Bird-Friendly Campus Initiative
We actively monitor glass buildings around campus, with two students walking a two-hour route, every day, to collect data as rigorously possible. Our data led the University to apply bird-friendly window film to the west-facing side of Prospect House.
We work with the Office of Sustainability, alongside our partners in the Stoddard Lab, to target efforts to reduce collisions caused by campus buildings. We are also committed to helping Princeton ensure that all future buildings are safe for birds. This project is funded by the Office of Sustainability and the Stoddard Lab.
Multidisciplinary Bird Colloquium
We run an event series designed to connect undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty who are interested in birds, from any angle. Whether this is about birds in literature, cutting-edge scientific research, or any other avenue of inquiry, it fits into our mission of expanding engagement around birds.
Interested in giving a seminar? Get in touch with our president at birds@princeton.edu. Your event can be presentation style, or a discussion seminar.
We regularly report our bird-watching data on eBird. This data is used by scientists around the world to track bird population trends and support their conservation.
We also have a number of past projects that we’ve run.
Project FeederWatch
From 2019 to 2020, we maintained a set of feeders in the Princeton Garden Project. From November to April each year, we gathered data for Project FeederWatch, a citizen science project run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We received funding for this project from the Princeton Office of Sustainability’s High Meadows Foundation Sustainability Fund.
Educating local K12 students
We taught a “bird-watching 101” class for high schoolers in 2019 at Princeton’s annual Splash conference.
BIRDLINK
We were working with a Princeton alumna to build a vertical bird-friendly garden on campus, with remote audio monitoring sensors built in, in partnership with her startup, BIRDLINK.