Make a splash

Frank Chapman, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History, initiated the Audubonʼs Christmas Bird Count in 1900. He motivated ordinary people to count birds, instead of killing them in the annual bird hunt, and began what was to become one of the worldʼs oldest ongoing citizen science projects.

The event has grown in popularity and the collected data is uploaded to an online repository thatʼs accessed multiple times a week by research scientists from around the globe.

There are citizen science projects in South Africa, too, allowing stay-at-home moms, bored executives, belligerent teenagers and anyone in-between, to contribute to science and have fun at the same time. Here are a few ways to aid research along