Make your birding count. Become a Birdata pro! Learn how use the platform to gather and explore scientific data on birds in Australia.
Birdata is BirdLife Australia’s online national bird monitoring platform. With more than 30 million records compiled from the combined efforts of professional researchers and citizen scientists like you, it tells us where our birds are living, and how their populations are changing over time.
This data directly contributes not only to our on-the-ground conservation work, but also to broader conservation planning, land management, research and decision making. And you can get involved!
Whether you’ve recently completed the Aussie Bird Count, have already dabbled in Birdata, or are an enthusiastic beginner, this course is for you.
To give Australia’s birds the best possible future, our researchers need your help to collect quality and useful data, and this course teaches you exactly how to do that. You’ll find out how to create a more accurate and reliable survey and we’ll introduce you to our gold-standard survey methods – used by scientists across Australia. You’ll learn how to navigate the Birdata app and website like a pro, while you input data and explore everyone else’s data. Plus, we’ve packed the course full of tips to make you a better birder.
Ready to level-up your bird surveying skills? Sign up below.
Course Duration: It will take approximately 1.5 hours to work through the course content. Additional time will be required to get outside and put your learnings into action. Take as long as you need to finish the course; it’s self-paced. Afterwards, you’re welcome to revisit the content as often as you need.
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This course is for beginner Birdata users. If you’ve just come from the Aussie Bird Count, this course is a great introduction to step up your survey skills. This course will also be invaluable to those who’ve already submitted a few Birdata surveys but wish to fine-tune their surveying skills and explore all the features Birdata has to offer.
This course was created by BirdLife Australia’s data and surveying gurus: the Birdata team. Video lessons are presented by ornithologist Dr Holly Parsons.
The course is free, thanks to our generous funders.
The course is online, via the BirdLife Australia Learning Hub, which you can access with a MyBirdLife login. If you don’t have one, it’s easy to set one up – you’ll be prompted to do this as you register for the course.
The student experience is best on a laptop or desktop computer, but yes, it is possible to access the course content on a mobile or tablet.
Some features of Birdata can only be accessed via the Birdata website, so you might find it easier to have the course and the Birdata website open in different browser tabs on a computer, rather than a mobile or tablet.
Yes!
Log in to MyBirdLife or create a My BirdLife account to register for this course.
What happens next? Once you’ve completed the form, you will be granted access to the course. Look out for an enrolment confirmation email from learn@birdlife.org.au shortly. Don’t forget to check your spam/junk folder.
