Nest Quest Go!

Nest Quest Go! is a project affiliated with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Citizen-Science Department. Our goal is to understand the historical nesting patterns of North American birds by transcribing nest-record cards. Beginning in the 1960s and spanning over three decades, observers documented nesting behavior in birds by completing nest record-cards. Completed cards were mailed to the Lab, sorted, and stored. While the cards were utilized extensively in their heyday, the paper cards have lately been sitting in a metal filing cabinet, waiting for the day when their importance can be fully understood. Well, that day has come…

The nest record collection consist of over 300,000 cards that NestWatch is working on digitizing and transcribing. Valuable scientific questions can be asked and answered regarding the nesting behavior of birds over time by examining historical records. We hope to bring new discoveries to light using these previously hidden datasets. Scan through our active projects and join in the nest-questy-fun!