The Prevalence of Litter Foraging Among UK Birds: Lessons Learned From A Citizen Science Project

Abstract

1.Anthropogenic food sources, such as litter, are readily available to birds in urban areas. As an overly anthropogenic diet can have negative health consequences for wildlife, monitoring the frequency of foraging in litter compared to natural food resources can be an important component of wildlife conservation efforts. To understand how common litter foraging is among different bird species, we conducted a citizen science project with volunteers across the UK. Through this project, we also tried to engage people in birdwatching and bird surveys who would not normally participate in these activities. A particular focus was on recruiting respondents from underrepresented groups, and the methodology was designed to accommodate people without any background knowledge of birds. While we did not receive enough observations to draw conclusions about the litter foraging rates of different bird species across the UK, we report the submissions we received, as well as the demographic composition of the volunteer group. We successfully reached volunteers who did not participate in birdwatching or BTO bird surveys before, as well as some young volunteers, but were unsuccessful in reaching respondents from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We hope that the successes and failures of our methods reported here can be useful to others designing citizen science studies, so that birdwatching and volunteering for bird surveys will be equally accessible to all in the future.