History and Future of the Project

This project started in 1983 when Peter Wimberger, then an undergraduate at the University of Washington, created computer files of the nesting records available from the Burke Museum nest cards and from various egg collections and field notes. He then went on to graduate school before the project could be completed. In the mid 1990’s Darwin Wood joined the project and worked on it for three years. He added further records, transferred the computer files from mainframe to micro computer, generated the analyses, and wrote summary accounts. Sievert Rohwer coordinated the project, and did the final writing, editing and analyses while on sabbatical leave in 2003. Dennis Lund, Taylor Fjeran, and FX Wood photographed the egg sets between 2004 and the present, and Lund edited the images for presentation on the web. Lichen Zhang designed the web site, with the help of Xiao Tong. Throughout the project Chris Wood and Sievert Rohwer supervised the maintenance of the database and the organization of the records and data files.

We hope that publishing these accounts on the world-wide web will achieve several objectives. First, it should make the information available to a much wider audience than could be reached through traditional print publication. Second, web publication should make regular updates of the accounts possible. Third, and of greatest future importance, the immediate accessibility of these accounts should help stimulate the contribution of further records to the Northwest Nest Record Program at the Burke Museum.

What is striking as one looks through these accounts is how few and spotty the records are for most species. Partly, of course, this is simply a problem of people not knowing that the Burke Museum was a repository for such records. Thus common species that breed over large areas of Washington may have records for only a small subset of the counties included in their Washington range. But the paucity of records for most Washington species is also symptomatic of our times. Unlike the amateur egg collectors, most birders and even most professional ornithologists are poor nest finders; thus we badly need a renewed commitment to finding nests and recording their contents or outcomes on repeated visits. Indeed, so few of the records currently available are characterized by repeated visits that we have made no effort to summarize nest survival in this first set of accounts. Yet nesting success is fundamental to estimates of the viability of populations and is just one of the many ways that contributing records to this program could contribute effectively to conservation of the birds of Washington.