Based on the same protocol they themselves use, they've made it easy, even fun, for everyone with a nest box to join them in their scientific endeavor. If everybody told us what was going on in just one nest box on his or her property, the overwhelming task of gleaning information from this virtually untapped resource would be as easy for each person as checking his or her mailbox once a week. But Dhondt is convinced that if these people knew that their observations could be used to help answer questions relating to far-reaching topics such as biodiversity, they would promptly join the CNBN team. In fact, Dhondt wonders if current CNBN participants fully understand the impact they are already having on bird study. To do so, Dhondt says they first need to understand some of the broader questions posed by the scientific community.
Scientists know, for example, that species characteristics vary depending on latitude.
House Sparrows, for example, are larger in the North than they are in more southerly locales. Yet, this is a species that was introduced from Europe into New York City in 1865. At that time, those 100 or so individuals. which were brought from the same region at the same time. were roughly the same size. Dhondt and his colleagues developed the Cornell Nest Box Network to help answer some of these questions. Participants can join any or all of CNBN's four different studies.