What is the Intermountain West Shorebird Survey?
Shorebirds represent a unique aspect of biodiversity that links isolated sites, often hundreds or thousands of miles apart, and thus, shorebirds are excellent indicators of environmental health across large and small landscapes.
 
Inland sites in the Intermountain West are oases for our migratory shorebirds. Our collective efforts will document changes to freshwater wetlands and saline lakes over the past 30 years by recreating the last comprehensive shorebird survey of the region in 1989-1995. By combining the efforts of professional and volunteer scientists, we will collect critical information to help sustain shorebird populations into the future, which is the purpose of the Intermountain West Shorebird Survey.
 
The project objectives are:

• Describe the distribution and abundance of shorebirds during migration by count all shorebirds at 189 sites during the spring and fall migrations for 3-5 years.
• Compare the current distribution and abundance of shorebirds with distributions from 1989-1995.
• Inform future management decisions by identifying local and regional factors that influenced the abundance and distribution of shorebirds.

Ideal shorebird volunteers:

• Have a passion for birds and time outdoors,
• Can commit to one survey day in the spring and one survey day in the fall, and allow some flexibility for scheduling around bad weather,
• Will be safety conscience and cooperate with field partners,
• Can collect high quality data in the field,
• Can count shorebirds and identify to species in breeding and non-breeding plumage, OR can assist an observer by recording data and/or providing transportation.

How can you help?
We need help collecting baseline site information (access points, observation locations, and potential hazards), designing routes and surveying sites. We will be providing more details on what information we need and how to collect it during our upcoming webinar sessions. Please fill out the online form below if you are interested in visiting a familiar or new shorebird site to help design surveys and count shorebirds during our migration windows (August 9th – 22nd and April 24th – 30th), any effort helps shorebirds count! Mileage reimbursement is available on a case-by-case basis.

Save the dates!

• July 20th, 2022 – Shorebird Site Reconnaissance Webinar
• August 2nd, 2022 – Survey Protocol and Training Webinar
• August 9th-22nd, 2022: Fall 2022 Peak Shorebird Survey Window – get out and count shorebirds!

Ready to get involved?
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Our chapter was honored to be a guest at the Mark Wellman Adventure Day event last Sunday. Mark Wellman adventure day is an event at Sparks Marina where disabled people have the opportunity to try outdoor activities such as kayaking and rock climbing. Our staff brought along a number of resources for participants to learn and interact with, including binoculars and museum skins. We had a wonderful time speaking with and entertaining guests who stopped by. We also kept a small bird list of the species we observed flying by as we spoke with guests. Sparks Marina is a wonderful birding hotspot and without intentionally seeking, we observed 22 different species. A full list is included as part of the trip report below.

​Our staff sends a huge thank you to all the partner organizations involved including:

• the City of Sparks
• Northern Nevada Center for Independent Living
• Mark Tadder and the Northern Nevada Chapter of National Federation for the Blind.

Photos courtesy of Kentia Kalanaki.