A new demonstration video for an Avian Data Monitoring Portal developed by the Regionwide Trustee Implementation Group is now available. The portal houses a large amount of survey data for Gulf of Mexico colonial waterbirds. This tutorial may be particularly useful for users who need a little extra help navigating the database. This powerful resource can answer questions about how colonial waterbirds are using the northern Gulf of Mexico coast and barrier islands. The database, which was developed for the Trustees by the Water Institute and Colibri Ecological Consulting, is one tool available to the Trustees when determining what bird restoration projects and activities to implement.
The tutorial video demonstrates the ways the portal’s search engine can answer questions about where and when colonial waterbirds are found, species composition, and how many birds and nests were found. The database can be searched by year, state, geo-region (such as Mississippi Sound), bird species and colony, and watershed. More than 49,000 aerial photographs are available to view.
Capturing the thousands of aerial photographs of bird colonies was a difficult task. The Trustees have also posted a video showing the equipment used and the process for taking photos from the belly of a plane.
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