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 and students study birds and other wild animals. Their main goal is to understand and protect Earth's amazing variety of life, especially birds.
About 250 people work at the Lab. They do research, teach others, and run projects where everyday people can help science. The Lab is supported by over 100,000 members and friends who love birds.
The Lab publishes a magazine called Living Bird four times a year. They also send out an email newsletter twice a month. They manage many fun projects and websites, like the award-winning All About Birds.
Contents
History of the Lab
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology was started in 1915 by Arthur Augustus Allen. He worked hard to create the first university program in the country for studying birds. At first, the Lab was part of Cornell University's department for studying insects and water life.
In 1954, a birdwatcher and businessman named Lyman Stuart helped buy land for a special bird sanctuary. He 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 yellow-bellied sapsucker woodpeckers breeding there. This bird is now common and is even part of the Lab's logo!
Today, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is in a building called the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. This modern building opened in the summer of 2003.
Visiting the Lab
The Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary is a large area of 300 acres. It has more than 5 miles of trails that wind around Sapsucker Pond. You can walk on boardwalks through wetlands and forests. Over 230 different kinds of birds have been seen in this sanctuary. About 55,000 people visit the sanctuary and the Lab's public areas every year.
In the fall of 2023, the Visitor Center got a big makeover. It reopened in June 2024 with exciting new exhibits you can interact with. The Visitor Center is free to visit and welcoming to everyone. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and closed on Mondays.
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. The Lab has a budget of over $45 million each year to support its important projects. It has 18 senior staff members, and eight of them are also professors at Cornell.
Citizen Science Projects
One of the coolest things the Lab does is called "participatory science" or "citizen science." This means everyday birdwatchers, no matter their age or skill, can help gather information for scientists. This helps scientists understand where birds live and how many there are.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world join the Lab's projects. The eBird project lets birders report any of the Earth's over 10,585 bird species. This information goes into a huge scientific database. As of July 2024, over 127 million checklists have been recorded. These reports cover 10,826 species from more than a million eBird users. eBird data has been used in hundreds of scientific studies about birds.
The Cornell Lab has other citizen science projects too. These include Project FeederWatch, NestWatch, and Celebrate Urban Birds. Every February, the Lab, the Audubon Society, and Birds Canada host the 4-day Great Backyard Bird Count. This event happens all over the world. The Cornell Lab also has Bird Cams that show live videos of birds nesting in the spring.
Learning About Birds
The Lab's Bird Academy and K–12 curricula teach people of all ages about birds and nature. Bird Academy offers online courses you can take at your own speed. You can learn about woodpeckers, hummingbirds, how to paint or photograph birds, and how to identify them better. The K–12 materials help students and teachers learn to think like scientists.
Merlin Bird ID App
The Cornell Lab created a free app called Merlin Bird ID. It works on phones and tablets. This app helps you figure out what birds you see. It covers 3,000 species from the Americas, Western Europe, and India.
You can get a list of birds likely to be in your area. You can also answer simple questions to get a list of possible birds, with pictures and sounds. In 2017, the app added a cool feature: you can upload a photo, and the app uses AI to help identify the bird! The app also has Sound ID. It can identify about 450 North American species in real-time from their calls. It even works if many birds are calling at once.
Bird Research
Scientists, students, and visiting experts at the Cornell Lab do a lot of original research. They study how birds behave, how to protect them, how they evolved, and how their populations change. They even use weather radar to track how birds move during migration. Engineers at the Lab also create special tools and software. These tools help study how birds and other animals communicate and move.
In the Center for Biodiversity Studies & Higher Education, researchers take DNA from birds. This helps them learn how different species are related to each other.
The Cornell Lab's Center for Avian Population Studies has published many studies. They also create guides for land managers. These guides help protect birds like scarlet tanagers and wood thrushes, whose numbers are shrinking. The Lab worked with other groups to create the first North American Landbird Conservation Plan. They also helped create the first "State of the Birds" report in March 2009, and in later years.
Lab scientists are now working with companies and government groups. They are trying to understand how wind power facilities affect birds and bats on land. They also study how they affect whales and other sea creatures offshore.
Studying Animal Sounds
The Lab's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics makes special recording devices. Researchers use these devices in projects all over the world. These small units have a hard drive, a case, and microphones. They can be placed in a forest or even anchored to the ocean floor. These recorders have been used in projects like the Elephant Listening Project in Africa. They also help study whales and birds like northern spotted owls.
The Yang Center has also made software programs called Raven and Raven Lite. These programs help analyze sounds. Engineers are also working on special radio tags. These tags can track birds and other animals for longer periods. They can even follow bird migrations.
Media and Archives
From its very beginning, the Cornell Lab has been interested in bird and animal sounds. The founder, Arthur Allen, and his students were pioneers. They made the first recordings of bird songs on film soundtracks.
The Macaulay Library has grown a lot since then. It is now the world's best scientific collection of natural history audio, video, and photos. The library has over 64 million audio, video, and photo files. Macaulay Library experts still go on trips to collect wildlife sounds, images, and videos from around the world. They also collect media from people who contribute to the archive.
The Lab's Center for Conservation Media shares stories from around the world. They work with many partners to show important conservation issues. These include protecting important habitats and helping individual species in trouble, like the Great Philippine Eagle and the African Grey Parrot.
Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates
The Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates is also located in the Johnson Center. It holds a huge collection of animal specimens. This includes 1,230,000 fish, 44,300 amphibians and reptiles, 45,000 birds, 3,200 eggs, and 15,000 mammals. Some of these animals are now extinct. Students and scientists use these collections for their studies.
