I recently retired my old blog and thought I might take a scorched earth approach to the migration as there wasn’t much I wanted to keep. Tech writing often doesn’t age overly well (seemingly not mine at any rate).
As I go all-in with Medium, there was one post I wanted to keep — which is the one below. It’s amusing to me now, as it was written way before I got fully involved in big data, analytics, digital government and all that craic.
Anyway, I will start posting non-old stuff soon, I promise!
I’ve been thinking a lot about BirdTrack lately — a digital service from the BTO which allow members of the public to submit their sightings of birds. It’s a fine case of technology, a desperate need and a willing public all combining to achieve great things.
Before it is too late, I have tried to recapture the extraordinary beauty of this bird and to convey the wonder of the land he lived in, a land to me as profuse and glorious as Africa. It is a dying world, like Mars, but glowing still.
— J A Baker, The Peregrine
The Problem
Published in 1967, John Bakers masterpiece of nature writing ‘The Peregrine’ is a deeply personal and lyrical account of his years spent tracking and studying falcons across the farmland and estuaries of his native Essex.
At that time, the Peregrine falcon was undergoing a catastrophic global decline in Britain (and elsewhere) owing largely to the use of the pesticide DDT, a substance which is particularly harmful for those birds at the top of the food-chain in whose bodies it accumulates.
A concentrated conservation effort and bans on harmful pesticides brought the Peregrine back from the brink of extinction in the UK — the seemingly inevitable fate which Baker had so feared for the bird.
And 40 years on, this is a truly great thing. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a Peregrine in the wild. I’d wanted to see one since I knew what one was. They are all bold markings, bold shapes, speed and violence — the fastest of all living animals; like catching a glimpse of a leopard on the Antrim coast road.
For every Phoenix there are others which are not so lucky. The State of Nature report which was published earlier this month carried the grave headline that 60% of native animal species assessed had suffered a decline in the past 50 years. 31% have suffered a ‘strong’ decline.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area of mid-Antrim that was populated with some of our most iconic species.
Sadly, I say was rather pointedly. In my lifetime the Curlew, Lapwing and Hen Harrier have all slowly followed the Corncrake (a bird of my parents’ generation) on the road to local extinction.
They are not there yet — but if there is not a collective will to prevent it, then it will be inevitable.
BirdTrack
In light of such a grim assessment, what can ordinary people — people who are not professionally involved in conservation efforts — contribute to help prevent species from declining?
It’s often said that there are two ways to vote — with your money or with your time. It’s a concept familiar to technologists like myself — the shiny tech always gets carried along on a wave of popular enthusiasm and fills up the hackathons.
“Citizen Science” taps in to this tendency of clever and enthusiastic people to vote with their time and effort.
I first came to BirdTrack some years ago whilst randomly browsing the BTOs web site. A web app that allowed the public to sign up and submit their own detailed bird observations. I found this to be an incredibly powerful and simple idea — why had no one thought of this sooner!
After years of operation the site has become an absolute trove of interesting and important data. Yearly trends in the reporting rates of individual species; earliest recordings of spring migrants; maps of regional distribution and many more.
When I log on to the mobile app I am presented with a map showing sightings that other people have recorded in the vicinity of wherever I am. It truly is a fantastic tool for anyone interested in birds — if they’d had it back in my formative years I would have been all over it!
As well as playing to the natural tendency in birders to meticulously list everything they see, it also throws in a few modern ‘gamification’ twists as well. There are leader boards for total species in a year, total lists submitted in a month - the dedication of some people is staggering.
Why This Is Important
Jennifer Pahlka delivered an excellent talk available on TED called ‘Coding A Better Government’. It’s a popular one among tech evangelists who like to believe that many problems of governmental bureaucracy can be overcome by using technology to empower citizens.
It’s an apt lesson that conservation can learn from as well. BirdTrack is a shining example of how much can be achieved when you put a powerful tool in people’s hands.
If you are interested in contributing, you can sign up at http://blx1.bto.org/birdtrack. There are also a variety of other surveys being run on the BTO website at any given time.
The 2007–2011 Bird Atlas is also available for pre-order — a project which owes it’s existence in large part to the efforts of volunteers through BirdTrack and the BTOs other national surveys.
[Originally published May, 2013]
