The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has issued the 2001 list of "most wanted birds" to raise awareness of declining bird species and to encourage participation in a citizen-science project, The Birdhouse Network (TBN).

Birds on the list represent the 16 avian species about which researchers have little nesting information. TBN asks people of all ages to put up nest boxes -- or birdhouses -- and collect essential information about each box: location, habitat characteristics and number of eggs and nestlings in the nest. This information will be reported over the Internet to Cornell University researchers, who will analyze the data to determine what, if any, environmental factors contribute to nesting success.

The Birdhouse Network's

MOST WANTED BIRDS

16. Hooded Merganser

15. Western Screech-Owl

14. Red-breasted Nuthatch

13. Pygmy Nuthatch

12. Bewick's Wren

11. White-breasted Nuthatch

10. Great Crested Flycatcher

9. Chestnut-backed Chickadee

8. American Kestrel

7. Boreal Chickadee

6. Eastern Screech-Owl

5. Purple Martin

4. Brown-headed Nuthatch

3. Oak Titmouse

2. Mountain Chickadee

1. Prothonotary Warbler

More information is available at: http://birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse , e-mail birdhouse@cornell.edu , or by writing to Cornell Lab of Ornithology/TBN, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850. Or participants can sign up and put birdhouse observations to work by calling (800) 843--2473 in the United States or (607) 254--2473 in Canada.

TBN participants receive Birdscope (the quarterly news publication from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), Inside the Birdhouse (a semi-annual TBN-specific newsletter), a full-color poster of cavity-nesting birds, access to data via TBN's online database, subscription to an e-mail discussion, group discount coupons, and much more. A $15 participation fee helps defray the cost of materials and web development essential to data collection and analysis.

The TBN web site features Nest Box cams to eavesdrop on American kestrels in Pennsylvania, barn owls in Florida and mountain bluebirds in Nevada, as well as Eastern bluebirds in Maryland and Carolina chickadees in the Carolinas.

Since 1997, TBN has produced an annual top 10 list of the most commonly reported cavity-nesting birds. That list invariably includes the usual suspects -- tree swallows, Eastern bluebirds, house wrens, house sparrows, mountain bluebirds, and Western bluebirds. This past year, for the first time, the researchers looked at nesting attempts of cavity-nesting birds from the bottom of the list and were concerned to find that they had fewer than 50 records for some 16 species of cavity nesters.

In response, they developed TBN's "most wanted" list to help answer questions such as: Why are there so little data on these species? Are they truly rare, or are their habitats too remote for participants in the project? Are these species finding enough natural nest sites in the wild, thereby eliminating the need for human-provided nest boxes?

Some of these species are, in fact, showing population declines, according to Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data collected and analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey. The prothonotary warbler, a stunning, golden-colored bird of the southeastern United States, has declined in numbers some 42 percent over the last 20 years. The mountain chickadee, which breeds in coniferous and mixed woodlands in western mountain regions, has declined 42 percent over the same period. Eastern screech-owl, a species that uses a wide range of habitats throughout the East, has declined 23 percent, and the American kestrel, a beautiful little falcon that breeds extensively throughout the United States and Canada, by18 percent.

TBN strives to pick up where the Breeding Bird Survey leaves off. "BBS data show that some of the species on our Most Wanted List are declining. Now The Birdhouse Network is working to determine the reasons for these declines," says Tina Phillips, TBN's project leader. "To do that, we're asking the public to get involved and share their observations of cavity-nesting birds."