Cornell Lab of Ornithology facts for kids
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| Type | Research and conservation institute |
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| Established | 1915 |
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Parent institution
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Cornell University |
| Location |
Ithaca, New York, U.S.
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The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a special part of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It's a place where scientists, students, and bird lovers work together to study birds and other wildlife. They want to understand and protect Earth's amazing variety of life, especially birds.
About 250 people work here. They do research, teach others, and run projects where everyday people can help science. Most of the Lab's work is supported by its 75,000 members.
The Cornell Lab also publishes books and a magazine called Living Bird. They send out a monthly online newsletter too. They run many cool projects where people like you can help scientists. One of their popular websites is All About Birds, which even won a Webby Award!
Contents
History of the Bird Lab
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology was started by Arthur Augustus Allen in 1915. He worked hard to create the first program in the country for people to study birds in college. At first, the Lab was part of the university's department that studied insects (entomology) and freshwater life (limnology).
In 1954, a bird lover and businessman named Lyman Stuart, along with other donors and landowners, bought or gave land for a special bird sanctuary. Stuart also helped pay for the first Lab building, which opened in 1957.
Arthur Allen and his friends had named the area "Sapsucker Woods." They found the first breeding pair of yellow-bellied sapsucker woodpeckers there. This type of woodpecker is now common in the area. You can even see it in the Cornell Lab's logo!
Today, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is in a newer building called the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. It opened in 2003.
Exploring the Lab and Its Woods
The Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary is a big area, about 226 acres (0.9 square kilometers). It has more than four miles (6 kilometers) of trails. You can walk around Sapsucker Pond, cross boardwalks, and explore wetlands and forests.
Over 230 different kinds of birds have been seen in the sanctuary! About 55,000 people visit the sanctuary and the public areas of the Cornell Lab every year. The Visitor Center is open every day from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
How the Lab Works
The Lab is a part of Cornell University. It has a special board of 30 members who help guide its work. These members are chosen by the Cornell Board of Trustees.
You Can Be a Citizen Scientist!
One of the coolest things the Lab does is "citizen science." This means everyday people, like you, can help scientists! Bird watchers of all ages and skill levels can share what they see. This helps scientists understand where birds live and how many there are.
Almost 600,000 people take part in the Lab's projects. For example, the eBird website lets birders record any of the world's 10,585 bird species. As of October 2020, almost 47.7 million bird checklists have been recorded!
The Cornell Lab has many citizen science projects throughout the year. Some popular ones include Project FeederWatch, NestWatch, and Celebrate Urban Birds. They also work with the National Audubon Society on projects like eBird and the Great Backyard Bird Count. The Lab even has NestCams that show live videos of birds nesting in the spring!
Merlin Bird ID App
The Cornell Lab makes a free app called Merlin Bird ID for phones and tablets. This app helps you figure out what birds you see! It covers 3,000 species from places like the Americas, Western Europe, and India.
You can look at lists of birds for any place in the world. You can also answer simple questions about a bird you saw, and the app will suggest what it might be. It shows you pictures and plays bird sounds.
In 2017, Merlin Bird ID got a cool update: it can identify birds from photos! You just upload a picture, and the app helps you name the bird. The app also has Sound ID, which can identify about 450 North American bird species just by listening to their calls. It can even tell you if multiple birds are calling at once!
Bird Research at the Lab
Scientists, students, and visiting experts at the Cornell Lab do lots of original research. They study how birds behave, how to protect them, how they evolved, and how their populations change.
In the Evolutionary Biology lab, researchers take DNA from living birds or old specimens. This helps them learn how different bird species are related to each other.
The Lab's Conservation Science Department helps protect birds whose numbers are shrinking. They've created guides for land managers to help save birds like scarlet tanagers and wood thrushes. The Lab also helped create the first-ever "State of the Birds" report in 2009.
The Lab's Neotropical Bird Conservation Program gathers information about bird populations in Mexico. Many North American birds spend their winters there. The program also helps people in other countries learn about bird conservation.
From 2004 to 2009, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology led the scientific search for the ivory-billed woodpecker. This search was overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lab scientists are also working with companies and government groups to understand how wind power facilities affect birds and bats.
Listening to Animals: Bioacoustics Research
The Lab's Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP) creates special recording devices. These "autonomous recording units" (ARUs) can be placed in a forest or even on the ocean floor. They record sounds from animals.
ARUs have been used in projects like the Elephant Listening Project in Africa. They've also been used to study whales and in the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker.
BRP has also made computer programs called Raven and Raven Lite that help analyze sounds. Engineers are also working on special radio tags to track birds and other animals for longer periods, and to follow bird migrations.
Amazing Media Archives
Since it started, the Cornell Lab has been very interested in bird and animal sounds. The founder, Arthur Allen, and his students were pioneers. They made the first recordings of bird songs on a film soundtrack!
Today, the Macaulay Library at the Lab is the world's best collection of natural history sounds, videos, and photos. It has over 14 million audio, video, and photo files! People from the Macaulay Library still go on trips around the world to collect more wildlife sounds, images, and videos for the archive.
Information Science: Making Data Work
The Information Science team at the Lab builds the computer systems that make all the citizen science projects work. They also turn huge amounts of data into easy-to-understand charts, maps, and tables.
These computer experts built the system for "Birds of North America Online." They are also helping to connect bird data from many different places across North and South America. As of October 2009, this network had more than 66.5 million records, and anyone could access them!
Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates
The Johnson Center, where the Cornell Lab is located, also houses the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates. This museum has a huge collection of animal specimens. It includes:
- 1,230,000 fish specimens
- 44,300 amphibians and reptiles
- 45,000 birds
- 3,200 eggs
- 15,000 mammals (some of which are now extinct)
Students and scientists use these collections for their studies and research.
