Birds are ideal environmental education “tools” to help connect people to the natural world, as they are visible almost everywhere, and they attract our attention through their bright colours, beautiful songs and interesting behaviours. Further, birds are indicator species, which means they are a powerful measure of the health of a given ecosystem. Through our bird-focused environmental education and research programs at Finca Cántaros, we teach participants about the natural history of local birds, but our most important goal is to foster both appreciation for these species and motivation to help protect their habitat. These programs include:
Conserva Aves is a Latin American and Caribbean-wide consortium of organizations working collaboratively on bird conservation, led by the American Bird Conservancy, Audubon, BirdLife International, Birds Canada and RedLAC. Finca Cántaros Environmental Association was invited to participate in the 2024 meeting of Conserva Aves in El Salvador, as part of the consortium’s efforts to expand the number of regional partners and hectares of forest restored and conserved for bird habitat, with an emphasis on engaging women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendants.
Finca Cántaros implements the BirdSleuth International curriculum, a science and environmental education curriculum developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology aimed at engaging students in learning about birds, habitat and citizen science, thanks to funding from our strong local collaborator the San Vito Bird Club.
Finca Cántaros has partnered with local Loma Linda Field Station to run monthly Night Walks for the entire community, alternating between the two locations. These walks provide an excellent opportunity for people of all ages to learn about and connect with the magical world of nocturnal biodiversity that might otherwise go unnoticed, including birds such as owls and potoos.
Our “Mujeres Comprometidas con la Tierra” and “Lideresas por la Naturaleza” programs both incorporate bird walks and tutorials about the use of bird-focused citizen science applications like eBird of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
A Motus Receiver (also called a Motus Station) is part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, led by the organization Birds Canada.
The Motus Wildlife Tracking System “is an international collaborative network of researchers that use automated radio telemetry to simultaneously track hundreds of individuals of numerous species of birds, bats, and insects” (Birds Canada, 2020).
Finca Cántaros was the second location in all of Costa Rica to become equipped with the Motus Wildlife Tracking equipment, in order to monitor movement of birds and other species.
We are proud to be a part of this collaborative network—which can be described as citizen science or community science—so that we are able to collect important data about birds, bats or insects across long time periods and large distances than would otherwise be possible. This data allows us to respond better to scientific questions in many scientific fields of study, from population ecology to animal behaviour.
It also allows us to create more informed and robust conservation strategies. Motus Receivers, and the collaborations between people managing these receivers, facilitates a better understanding of the habitat needs and threats of countless species, and how we can do a better job protecting them.
To date our Motus Receiver has detected 18 individual birds, including: 13 Swainson’s Thrushes, 3 Red-eyed Vireo, and 2 Lesser Yellowlegs. You can visit the Finca Cántaros Motus Receiver page on the Motus site to check out more details about these exciting detections.
Check out our blog post on our Motus Receiver installation for more details, as well as this video specifically describing the Motus efforts in Costa Rica.
Finca Cántaros has partnered with Texas A&M University and Birds Canada to develop Motus-oriented environmental education materials.
Finca Cántaros, along with other local organizations, launched the first Christmas Bird Count (CBC) of Coto Brus (county) in 2021. It was a collaborative effort between the San Vito Bird Club, Las Cruces Biological Station, and Turibrus (the local tourism organization). CBCs are part of a worldwide Audubon Society initiative. Local groups on nearly every continent organize a day during December or early January to count the species present in their region, which contributes to our understanding local bird populations.
As part of our collaboration with the Crowther Lab’s Global Experiments Network, and our two collaborative projects (Assisted Restoration vs. Natural Regeneration and Functional Diversity), we are conducting bird counts to monitor the changes in bird communities as restoration advances.
Our collaboratively collected MoSI bird banding data allows us to better understand the bird populations and dynamics of southwest Costa Rica, and thus respond to interesting scientific questions and develop more informed conservation plans.
Finca Cántaros Environmental Association
1km south of San Vito Hospital
San Vito, Puntarenas Province
Costa Rica 60801
Email: info@fincacantaros.org
WhatsApp: +506 8878.1919
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