Bird Observatory

Overview

Manomet has studied and monitored migrant songbirds for over 40 years. This work began in the late 1960s at our coastal headquarters in Plymouth, and continues today. Manomet has one of the most consistent, long-term databases on migrant songbirds in the Western Hemisphere, fueling a number of important avian conservation programs. In 1989 Manomet sponsored a key international symposium on conservation of Neotropical migrants, which led to creation of Partners in Flight, an international consortium of governmental and private organizations dedicated to songbird conservation. More recently, Manomet worked in the Connecticut River watershed from Long Island Sound to Canada with other groups to identify important stopover habitat for migrant songbirds for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

About 350,000 birds have been banded at Manomet. As one of North America’s oldest and most extensive landbird banding stations, we have documented declines in formerly common migratory birds. Our spring and fall migration data complement the USGS Breeding Bird Survey in tracking changes throughout the Americas, and are used in guiding conservation responses. Since 2007, scientists at Manomet and Boston University have analyzed changes in the timing of spring migrations of 32 species of birds along the East Coast. Our findings show that roughly one third of the species migrate through the area significantly earlier on their annual trek north than they were 38 years ago. Click here to see a list of recent publications based on our bird banding data.

Manomet Begins as a Bird Research Station

Manomet was founded in 1969 as one of the first bird observatories in North America, making a commitment to the long-term study of birds and emphasizing their role as environmental indicators. The bird banding activities at Manomet grew from Kathleen (Betty) Anderson’s work netting, banding and testing wild birds for encephalitis in Eastern Massachusetts. In the fall of 1966, Betty and her group of fellow volunteers began banding operations at the Ernst house on Manomet Point on Cape Cod Bay. For the first three years, until it opened as a permanent research station in 1969, Manomet served as a banding site for a government project to study bird migration along the East Coast. Thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Roger Ernst, the house and 20 acres of land at Manomet were donated to the non-profit trust named Manomet Bird Observatory, with Betty Anderson as its first Executive Director. An active Board of Trustees included Ernst relatives John and Rosalie Fiske, who had visited European bird observatories and were eager to expand this concept in the USA. Thus within a few years in the 1960’s, Manomet Bird Observatory (nicknamed “MBO”), Point Reyes, Long Point and the Powdermill Nature Reserve became the first bird observatories in the Americas. Dozens of additional bird observatories have since been established.

Program Development from the Bird Observatory

Manomet gradually evolved from a simple banding station to a widely respected research organization. As the scope of the work expanded, the landbird work was complemented by shorebird studies (the International Shorebird Survey). Manomet also added shorebird breeding, wintering and habitat research, population studies and conservation research, followed in 1989 with the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN). Other studies included basic colonial breeding biology of herons at a nearby colony, and then of herons as indicators of chemical pollutants. This led to a whole area of research associated with agricultural chemicals and water quality. Manomet also developed research on ocean seabirds. Fisheries monitoring, and research on bycatch reduction followed. Breeding landbird research in nearby forests led to forest fire studies, radionuclides in birds at a nuclear power station, tropical forest bird studies, tropical forest conservation, renewable forestry practices and conservation of tropical biodiversity. In the mid 1990’s, “MBO” changed its name to its present name, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, to reflect the increased scale and broader scope of its work for the benefit of wildlife and people. Today Manomet is widely known throughout the Western Hemisphere for its commitment to avian and other conservation issues.

The Banding Program Today

The very fact of a long-term monitoring program for migrant birds, spring and fall, for up to 44 years, gives the opportunity for short and long-term cooperative studies with academic researchers. For example, our standardized, long-term dataset has been used to document phenomena such as population trends or the variation in spring migration dates over decades. Intern staff and volunteers are trained to help with running the banding program. Many of today’s ornithologists and conservationists in North and South America got their professional start banding birds at Manomet. Continuing a long tradition, education programs for Massachusetts schoolchildren, university students and adults are based on migration banding, local ecology and conservation biology. To date, about 25,000 area schoolchildren have come to Manomet during the spring or fall migration to see “birds in the hand” and to learn first hand about their needs. For many children, visiting the banding lab is a first step towards a sense of environmental stewardship. Read more in our most recent seasonal banding summaries.

The Christmas Bird Count

As part of the hemispheric-wide Christmas Bird Count, coordinated by National Audubon, Manomet has conducted the Plymouth count each year since 1974. The mid-winter Christmas Bird Count is another way to survey abundance and range of species present in the winter.

The Face of the Banding Lab

Trevor Lloyd-Evans began supervising Manomet’s bird survey in 1972, and continues in that capacity today. “It’s unusual that the same supervisor has worked there since 1972. The continuity of his supervision is important,” said Richard Primack his colleague at Boston University. Lloyd-Evans trains volunteers, collaborates with scientists and also leads walking tours dubbed "Travels with Trevor", which are a membership benefit.