Have you been curious how many eggs a Black-capped Chickadee pair cares for during a single breeding season? Or how to tell who built a nest just by the materials inside?
Join the Nesting Navigators and discover these answers firsthand as you witness the full, fascinating lifecycle of a songbird—from nest building to adorable baby birds. Nestbox monitoring is simple, deeply rewarding, and can be done on your own, in pairs, or as a family activity. The Observatory monitors breeding bird activity at over 100 constructed bird boxes throughout Port Washington, WI as part of our Neighborhood Habitat Improvement Program (NHIP), which aims to improve residential areas for birds, pollinators and water quality.
Volunteers are assigned a route to monitor on a weekly basis during the breeding season (April-July). Monitoring involves checking boxes for evidence of nesting, counting number of eggs laid, counting number of chicks hatched and number of chicks that leave the nest and entering data into the mobile NestWatch application.
Before jumping in, all volunteers are REQUIRED to participate in a brief training led by Observatory staff to prepare for this hands-on community science experience. T he upcoming training dates and times are listed—
Tuesday, March 31: 3:30 - 5:00 PM
Thursday, April 2: 3:30 - 5:00 PM
Tuesday, April 7: 5:30PM – 7:00PM
Thursday, April 9: 5:30PM – 7:00PM
PLEASE SIGN UP IN ADVANCE FOR THE TRAINING SESSION - HERE!
Commitment and Orientation Training
- Boxes need to be checked 1-2 times/week during the nesting season (April 1 - July 31). Volunteers are requested to signup in advance to select nesting trail routes that consist of 2 - 8 boxes/route. 1 box check takes approx. 5 minutes incl. data entry
- One 10-minute self-guided and one 1.5-hour in-person or virtual training is required annually
