If you visit the Morgan Arboretum, you undoubtedly enjoy seeing and hearing the many birds that live there as you walk the trails ………. so would you be interested in making some notes of what you see and helping to build a picture of the bird life of our favorite bit of woodland?

For generations people have been watching birds at the Morgan Arboretum - widely known as one of the best sites in the Montreal area for resident, nesting birds as well as for seeing birds of passage during the spring and fall migration periods.

But - what species are actually there, when do they arrive, when do they depart, where do they nest, are they increasing in number or decreasing? Surprisingly this has not been recorded. There are anecdotal references to "over 200 species" of birds but we just don't have the records. There are daily reports made to local bird-sighting hot-lines that are submitted by the keener sort of birders but these are intermittent and, naturally, are usually limited to "interesting" or rare birds. Undoubtedly, there is a huge fund of valuable information in people's personal diaries and memories and there are plenty of individuals who could you unerringly to some favoured spot to see a particular species at certain times of the year ...... but there is no easy way to pull it all together.

So - this is a personal attempt to fill in the gaps which is born out of interest and frustration. The recent establishment of the Montreal Bird Observatory at the adjacent Stoneycroft Pond research site (about which you can read on their website at http://www.migrationresearch.org/mbo.html ) is going to help enormously and, being run by professional ornithologists, it will be a rigorously conducted venture, but that omits information for the main part of the Arboretum that is accessible to the public. What is needed is a long term recording of day-to-day bird sightings over an extended period of time and this project is an attempt to start that process.

If you would like to help all I would ask you to do is send a brief e-mail to the address at the top of the page after your excursions with a list of species seen - plus, if you have the time,some indication of whereabouts they were seen, approximate numbers of individuals and maybe some information about what they were doing (feeding, carrying nesting material, escaping a hawk, just sitting on a branch taking the air etc). A note of the time of day and the weather conditions would be helpful as well. Please only submit reports for birds for which you are reasonably sure of the identification.

On the wall of the conservation centre at the arboretum you will find a blackboard on which interesting sightings can be noted and a box containing checklists etc - if you would rather not email your reports you can leave them at the arboretum office on your way out and ask them to be handed along.

Who is asking for your help in this? Let me introduce myself. I am a biologist by original training (Ph.D and all that stuff) but I do not make my living in field biology - birding is a pastime these days and so this survey is strictly an amateur venture. I am a member of the arboretum board of Directors and built and maintain the Arboretum's website and also I do a similar job for a couple of Montreal based birding web sites - for the PQSPB (www.pqspb.org) and this site,Birding MontrealI am an active bird photographer, have been visiting the Arboretum for several years and have been a member of the Friends almost since coming to live in the area so you can see that my commitment to this is fairly serious. Doing a complete, long term, professional survey would be both a full time job and costly. Clearly, in the absence of funding and adequate free time I cannot attempt that but by compiling the intermittent observations of the many, many people who watch birds in the Arboretum and adding this to my own observations, some very useful information can be gathered over a period of time.

I do hope that you will be able to take part in this small exercise in citizen science - it should be a lot of fun. All the results will be published and made freely available to anyone interested and i will make regular reports to those interested.

If you have any questions please get in touch - I very much look forward to hearing from you.