Seven Years of Gull Data Archived

From 2010 until 2016, Cornell University students diligently collected nesting data on two species of gulls at the Shoals Marine Lab on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Recently this large data set has come home to roost in our NestWatch database via a generous bulk-upload contribution from Dr. David Bonter including 1,564 nest records consisting of 49,284 detailed nest checks! Read our latest blog post for more on the team’s efforts.

We accept large data sets year-round of any species, including those not in nest boxes. Contact us if you have nesting data that you’d like to permanently archive with NestWatch.

New: Common Tern Shelter

Do you have beachfront property or live near a beach? Our newest addition to our Right Bird, Right House interactive tool is a chick shelter for Common Terns! Nesting shelters are meant to protect chicks from avian predators such as owls and falcons, which commonly prey on tern colonies throughout their breeding range. The plans were provided by James McGarry of Save the River, an organization based at the St. Lawrence River in northern New York. Check out the plans now.

New Royal Albatross Cam

It may be winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but in the Southern Hemisphere, birds are nesting! A new live feed from New Zealand launched recently on the Cornell Lab’s Bird Cams page. The camera is trained on a Northern Royal Albatross nesting at the end of the Otago Peninsula, in the Taiaroa Head Nature Reserve. Taiaroa Head (or Pukekura) is world renowned as the only mainland colony of albatross in the Southern Hemisphere. Watch it now!