Sparrow Swap

  1. Want to be a “Citizen Scientist”?
  2. Want to donate those House Sparrow eggs to a good cause?

Participate in SPARROW SWAP

Eggs are valuable for monitoring long-term environmental change, but due to the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, most Museums today lack significant egg
collections. House Sparrows only exist where humans exist and their
environmental exposure might be representative of our own. With Sparrow Swap,
we are legally reviving the hobby of egg collecting with non-native House
Sparrows to monitor environmental change. We are also evaluating the effect of
egg removal on house sparrow behavior and the consequences to native species
they might impact.

Project Manager Caren Cooper has opportunities for volunteers to send in house sparrow eggs they find to curate them into the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences collection. Here we aim to assess the contaminants that have bioaccumulated inside of the eggs and create a pollution map.

We are also interested in an egg collection project experimenting with a new
invasive species management plan where volunteers replace real eggs with fake
eggs in the nests of house sparrows and measure how many days the sparrow
incubate fake eggs.

All materials will be provided for volunteers.

http://scistarter.com/project/1380-Sparrow%20Swap