Students’ fieldwork strengthens bird migration research

Estonian students are collecting valuable migration data for ornithologists at the Vaibla bird station, with their school projects helping researchers track birds’ movements and lifespan, ERR reported.

Rahel Väär, a student at Tartu Miina Härma Gymnasium, analysed data from 130 nest boxes to study whether their locations were linked to great tits returning to the nets. Because the great tit is a useful model organism in ornithology, researchers can apply the observed patterns to other songbirds.

“In addition to giving us more information about one key model species, it also gives me, as a young student, experience of how the methodology works,” Väär said on the programme “Attention! This Is Science”.

The fieldwork therefore benefits both academic research and the education system, the programme said.

Teodor Karu, a student at Tallinn Secondary School of Science, studied how birds could be caught more efficiently. He placed loudspeakers between the mist nets and played the calls of selected species to lure territorial birds into the traps.

If the birds can be successfully attracted, the method saves researchers valuable time. “It could be used at ringing stations to decide which birds would be worth luring and which would not,” Karu said.

His experiments showed that playback worked well for some birds, including swallows and reed warblers, but was largely ineffective for bush warblers and leaf warblers.

The new tactic also brought a previously unringed short-legged värbrüdi into the Vaibla station’s net during one capture day.

Such successes sometimes earn students awards at science festivals, although most simply defend their school projects. Kristjan Adojaan, a supervisor of student research projects and a biodiversity informatics specialist at the University of Tartu, said the greatest value of the fieldwork was ensuring a future generation of scientists.

“Direct participation helps maintain and create young people’s interest in studying nature and provides a first introduction to doing real science,” Adojaan said.