 | | House Sparrow eggs. Photo by Caren Cooper | House Sparrows: Making the Best of a Bad Situation Do House Sparrows take over your nest boxes? If so, there's a way to make lemonade from those lemons! Because House Sparrows are a nonnative species, they are undesirable inhabitants of nest boxes in North America, but they are an easily accessible study species that can be used to address ecological questions without disturbing native birds. Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are currently studying this species to help better understand the enormous variation in eggshell patterns and color. House Sparrow eggs exhibit an extraordinary amount of variation. Eggshell coloration and pattern may vary with available calcium, sunlight patterns, or habitat quality, and are expected to differ seasonally and geographically as well.
You can help Cornell researchers gather information about the variation in House Sparrow eggs by submitting digital photographs of sparrow clutches so that the degree of speckling, spot size, and color tone of the eggs can be measured. Based on the variation that the researchers observe, they may find support for particular hypotheses about the underlying causes of eggshell color and patterning.
To photograph eggs, please place them on a white piece of paper next to a coin for scale. Also, clearly write the date and location (town, state, zip code) on the paper next to the eggs before photographing, or include this information in the file name. Email digital photos to Dr. Caren Cooper (caren.cooper@cornell.edu).  | | Eurasian Collared-Doves, courtesy Project FeederWatch | Tracking the Eurasian Collared-Dove
First introduced into Florida in the early 1980s, the Eurasian Collared-Dove is now well established throughout most of the United States with the exception of the Northeast.
Since 1999, Project FeederWatch has been tracking the expansion of this nonnative species across the country and researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are using these data to better understand the collared-dove invasion. They initially hypothesized that the spread of this species would negatively affect native dove species, such as Mourning Dove, White-winged Dove, and Common Ground-Dove. However, contrary to expectations, the abundance of native doves was generally found to be greater at sites where collared-doves occurred. FeederWatch staff will continue to monitor and study interactions between Eurasian Collared-Doves and native birds as this species continues to spread to different regions and environments. You can help by finding and monitoring Eurasian Collared-Dove nests. Nest monitoring is an extremely important part of tracking the spread of this species, but there are currently only two collared-dove nests in the NestWatch database. Collared-doves typically are found in urban, suburban, and agricultural areas. Their nests are very similar to those of other doves, consisting of a loose conglomeration of twigs, stems, roots, and grasses and located in trees, thick shrubs, or on building ledges. If there are Eurasian Collared-Doves where you live, please consider looking for their nests and monitoring them with NestWatch. Thank you for your participation in NestWatch to help science and the birds! Jason Martin
NestWatch and NestCams project leader
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850 The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a membership institution dedicated to interpreting and conserving the earth's biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. Visit the Cornell Lab's website at http://www.birds.cornell.edu. Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd, Ithaca NY 14850
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