Our region is located in the Pacific Migratory Route, which means we live in an area that provides refuge and rest to many birds in transit to their nesting or overwintering sites. But we not only live with these birds, we also live with innumerable birds that reside in the cities where we live and about which we still know little.

For this reason, in June of this year, Pronatura Noroeste began a collaboration with the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) and together formalized the Urban Bird Program: Colorado River Delta (PAUDRC), becoming the 100th city to have a program like this.

Currently, this initiative has been joined by the citizen group Mexicali Salvemos las Lagunas to conduct registries in the Lagunas México, Campestre, and Xochimilco lagoon complex, three urban wetlands of importance in the city of Canchanilla; the XXIII Mexicali City Council also joined through the Directorate of Environmental Protection to integrate activities about local birds in environmental education and social communication.

This citizen science project brings together the work of scientists and the community to improve our knowledge about birds. Through PAUDRC activities, the participants learn about the species in the region and how to observe and enter data in eBird to create a record of the birds and location where they were sighted.

Likewise, we call on civil society organizations, government, academia, and the community to be part of PAUDRC efforts and promote with us the generation of knowledge, the registration of birds that inhabit San Luis Río Colorado and Mexicali, and to contribute to their conservation through citizen science. Thus, in the future, it will be possible to consolidate a network of bird watchers in the Colorado River Delta.

You can volunteer for the PAUDRC activities. Soon the program will join October Big Day, a project promoted by the Cornell University Ornithology Laboratory as an opportunity to record birds for 24 hours. This event invites users to observe birds from home; you can participate with an observation of at least 10 minutes and no more than 60 minutes, or throughout the day. The goal is for 25,000 people to register observation data on October 17th to support the call from BirdLife International against the illegal sale of birds.