Take the group birding challenge: Find a Female Bird Day

You enjoy watching birds, right? And you like a challenge?

Here's a fun way to combine both: Gather up a few friends and go birding sometime during the Memorial Day weekend (May 25-27). But — and here's the challenging part — you'll only be counting female birds.

That's right, doing a Female Bird Day means no bright-red male cardinals, no green-headed mallards, no blue-blue bluebirds. You'll be looking for the usually more subtle, less obvious members of each species, and I guarantee this will make it harder to get a high count for your time in the field (or at the window).

What's the point? Realization is growing that female birds are "the most overlooked birds in North America," as one researcher puts it. To spotlight female birds, a group of staffers at the national Audubon Society created the Galbatross Project (gal + albatross). Anyone can join this fun event with a serious side: It's designed to help point out the fact that ornithology has been focused on male birds, leaving out females almost entirely. This bias shows up in field research, bird conservation, field guides, bird watching, bird photography, the whole gamut.

Advocating for female birds isn't some kind of misapplication of feminism to the bird world. Instead, it recognizes that we know very little about female birds' lifestyles and specific needs, and such ignorance can have profound effects on a species, especially in the conservation area. Example: Golden-winged warbler females tend to live at lower elevations during winter than males do. If field researchers study only birds at higher elevations, they may conclude that the species is doing fine. But in fact, the areas females inhabit tend to be heavily logged, leading to a decline in the female population, and should be factored into conservation plans for this at-risk species.

"Female birds are different in many ways, including biologically, from their male counterparts," notes Joanna Wu, a researcher at UCLA., one of the original Galbatrosses. "Our primary goal is to increase awareness of female birds anytime of the year."

Another example: It used to be widely accepted that only male birds sing, until several women researchers began to notice female birds singing, too. Many of the female songsters live in tropical zones, but some are right in our own backyards, like female cardinals. Field researchers are now listening more carefully, and revising their math: Thinking that all singing birds were males, scientists would double the number of birds singing, assuming that unseen females were nearby. But those two singers could be a male and a female, making the field count too high.

So gather up some friends and go out looking for birds wherever you find yourself on the start-of-summer holiday. You could count only female birds just for the fun of it, or as a fun way to help boost bird science.

How hard can it be, you ask? Consider that three Galbatrosses signed up for the World Series of Birding in New Jersey in 2019. In this event, teams work around the clock to come up with the highest number of species observed over 24 hours. Calling themselves Team Galbatross, counting only female birds led to a very low count, second from the bottom. And in last place was a team of under-6-year-old birders called the Tiny Tots.

What to do with your results?

The organizers of the Memorial weekend Female Bird Day suggest that you share your observations on social media (Instagram, Facebook, X, etc.) using the hashtags #FemaleBirds and #GalbatrossProject. It also is useful to submit the day's sightings on eBird. And to help build a database of traits that distinguish female birds, you could submit your notes at: https://femalebirdday.wordpress.com/submit/

Have fun with this, and remember the Galbatross creed: "We're just looking to share our love and nerdiness with the rest of the community."

Readers: I'd love to hear about your Female Bird Day; feel free to drop me a sum-up, email address below.

St. Paul resident Val Cunningham, who volunteers with the St. Paul Audubon Society and writes about nature for local, regional and national newspapers and magazines, can be reached at valwrites@comcast.net.

How hard can it be?

Easy: In some species, the males and females are easy to tell apart, such as red-winged blackbirds and American redstarts.

Tough: In some species, the differences between the sexes are subtle, such as in Eastern bluebirds and American robins.

Impossible: With some others, no one can tell the difference by sight. This is true for black-capped chickadees, gray catbirds, Eastern kingbirds and others. You will have to look for other clues, such as who's sitting on a nest.