Urban Birds of Ontario
Ontario’s cities are rapidly expanding, posing a serious threat to wildlife. To better understand why some birds thrive in cities while so many others do not, and to find ways to make Ontario’s cities more bird friendly, we need to know which species do and do not breed in our cities.
Drawing on the extensive knowledge of community members, including expert birders, naturalists, and ornithologists, we compiled a comprehensive list of the bird species that regularly breed in 15 of Ontario’s metro areas, as well as lists of birds that occur regionally but do not breed in cities. With these lists in hand, we are now analyzing data to determine what features of cities predict differences in bird occurrence across Ontario's cities. Stay tuned for results, and a website where these lists will be publicly available!
The links below bring you to a survey on the avifauna of Ontario’s metro areas. Surveys are anonymous, and each one asks you to rank the urban occurrence of about 150 to 180 bird species. Surveys should take about 20-30 minutes to complete carefully.
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LINKS TO SURVEYS:
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* You can find a global study where we successfully used similar citizen science methods here.
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*You can find answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about our methods here.
CONTACT US
Dr. Fran Bonier, Associate Professor
Queen's University Biology Department
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6 Canada
phone: +01.613.533.6000 x 77024
email:bonierf@queensu.ca
