Birds and Human Behavior: How the Pandemic Altered Avian Land Use

Nov 19, 2021  13:00 - 14:00

(GMT -5:00) Eastern Time

Event URL:  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/birds-and-human-behavior-how-the-pandemic-altered-avian-land-use-tickets-191918211537
Hosted by: CPAWS - Manitoba

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in extraordinary changes to human activity, especially during the initial few months of lockdown which coincided with spring bird migrations across North America.

News stories were filled with stories of wildlife showing up in new places or being noticed in greater numbers, but not all those reports were real or verifiable. How much did the decrease in human activity really impact wildlife, and if it did, what can we learn from that?

Dr. Michael Schrimpf will speak on his work using community science data from the eBird program to investigate the lessons we've learned from lockdowns. He is one of the authors of a recent study, Reduced human activity during COVID-19 alters avian land use across North America, which used records of more than 4.3 million birds observed by volunteers to examine whether reported bird abundances in cities and surrounding rural areas across Canada and the United States changed during the 2020 spring migration season.