Harbour Monitoring
Marine birds face many dangers in coastal waters along the Atlantic coast, especially from oil spills. Places like the Halifax Harbour and the Port of Sydney experience a lot of ship traffic and are home to industries that could put birds at risk in a disaster event. Canada’s Ocean Protection Plan is working to improve our understanding of where these birds are and when they’re there, creating baseline knowledge we can use to mitigate the risks of oil spills. Our project mobilizes volunteer birders to collect data on waterbird populations in Nova Scotia’s high-risk ports, using methods piloted by friends at Nature New Brunswick, and makes that information available to biologists at the Canadian Wildlife Service. Our volunteers conduct bird surveys at several locations around the ports, four to five times per year, and share their observations with Nature Nova Scotia staff, who then process the data into a format government can use.
Methods
Volunteers are monitoring 20 sites in both Halifax and Sydney. Each site is surveyed four or five times a year during Winter, Spring, Summer , and Early Fall Migration. Each survey is at least 30-minutes long Some sites are surveyed from a single point while others can be surveyed from multiple points. During a survey, all birds within a site are documented, including birds flying over the site and birds surrounding the site, and volunteers record weather and human disturbance observations.
Volunteer!
Sign up to be a volunteer surveyor by emailing info@naturens.ca or by completing the below google forms!
Port Halifax Water Bird Survey Volunteer Sign Up
Port of Sydney, Cape Breton Water Bird Survey Volunteer Sign Up
Volunteers monitor their site(s) and report back to NatureNS according to the following schedule:
Winter: December 18th and February 28th.
Spring: April 14th and May 28th.
Summer: June 15th and July 31st.
Early Fall: August 1st and October 15th.
Late Fall: November 1st and December 15th.
