In search of the not-so-common oriole, a flock of commoners

Fenwick is one of a new corps of citizen bird watchers who are tracking orioles, helping to monitor the common bird whose numbers have been declining. Last year, 710 citizen scientists - including elementary school students and retirees on the golf course - reported 3,374 orioles around the state to Mass Audubon. Fenwick spotted more orioles, 58, than any other participant in the project.

“It’s more serious for me because I see the beauty of it,’’ she said. “I see modern development, so it’s becoming more important to me to report these birds and keep tabs on them. They’re starting to decline in numbers. I think it’s going to be sad if the next generation or two doesn’t have this beautiful nature around to enjoy and learn from.’’

Lest the Oriole Project seem simple, its goals are sophisticated: to add the tallies of volunteer bird-watchers to the official scientific counts, but also to draw in people to the plight of birds whose numbers are dropping. The oriole survey was the pilot project in Mass Audubon’s Birds to Watch conservation effort, which has expanded to include whip-poor-wills, and soon, American kestrels.

“The idea is that conservation efforts have often focused on the rarest of the rare, endangered species,’’ said Christopher Leahy, the Gerard A. Bertrand chair of natural history and field ornithology at Mass Audubon. “The problem is when birds get so rare that they’re on the endangered species list, they get very hard to save. Very hard to save and very expensive to save.’’

Orioles were a logical place to start the Birds to Watch project. The brilliant colors and intricate hanging nests of orioles, often attracted to backyards by orange slices, make them popular. They’re still common enough that they’re accessible to many bird-watchers. But orioles are in trouble, their numbers dropping off steadily. In Massachusetts, orioles have declined about 3 percent a year, Leahy said.

“The statistics show that Baltimore orioles are declining quite significantly and have been for the last 30 years or so,’’ he said.

Tina Phillips, team leader for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch program, says citizen scientist programs have become more common in the last decade as technology has allowed the collection of large amounts of data over the Internet. Information sent in by volunteers may not be as detailed as data gathered by researchers, but the scale is vast. Phillips studies bird nests, and while a single researcher might collect data on 1,000 nests over 20 years, volunteers in her project can collect data on 10,000 nests in a single year. Scientific projects that draw in volunteers can also serve a broader purpose, she said.

“By simply telling people, ‘Orioles are declining, orioles are declining, orioles are declining,’ that may or may not get them to change their behavior,’’ Phillips said. “But if you can get them to go out and look for orioles, collect data on orioles, get them outside, your chances are better that you will get them to change their understanding, appreciation, or even their behavior.’’

There are limits to citizen science projects, Phillips said. Bird surveys collected by volunteers, for example, usually don’t gather information on individual birds since that would require banding, a complicated undertaking for amateurs.

While much conservation work is done by scientists and other specialists, the Birds to Watch project aims to get regular people involved in tracking - and ultimately, caring about - birds that are slowly declining. The oriole project began five years ago, and after this season ends - reports are filed from May 15 to July 31 - scientists at Mass Audubon will analyze the data. Most of the information available so far about orioles comes from annual breeding surveys conducted by the US Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service.

“We’ll have created a kind of army of oriole watchers out there,’’ Leahy said. “They become protective of their orioles. It’s kind of an additional level of environmental awareness.’’

Orioles usually arrive in Massachusetts in early May and are particularly visible now, during mating season. They like to build nests in tall, deciduous trees, like elms, maples, sycamores, and cottonwoods, often on the edge of a clearing, like a golf course. In early August, the birds start flying south for the winter.

“Whether it’s a 7-year-old girl or these guys on the golf course, they send us a report,’’ Leahy said. “The demographics of this are very broad. It creates a human record of the landscape, not just a scientific record.’’

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.