Spawning horseshoe crabs (photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)

This post was originally published on Citizen Science Buzz, a blog on TalkingScience that highlights science projects that are helping us better understand our planet and the Universe.

On June 1, 2011 at 11:51 PM, a group of people assembled on the beach in Northpoint, New York. There was no moon shining that night, not even a sliver. The people carried flashlights or wore headlamps. They held clipboards and paper.

Their mission: to report where horseshoe crabs were spotted along the beach.

This was just one of several places along New York’s shoreline where people collect data about horseshoe crabs. Volunteers also amassed on dark beaches in Stony Brook, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Westhampton. In all, volunteers monitored the comings and goings of horseshoe crabs at ten New York beaches that night.

They are a part of the New York Horseshoe Crab Monitoring Network, a group of citizen scientists who are documenting where horseshoe crabs emerge from the water to lay eggs along beaches in New York State.  On specific dates through the spring and early summer, participants collect data about the number of horseshoe crabs and identify their size and sex. They attach tags to the horseshoe crabs bulky exoskeleton and look for tags from prior years.

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Looking for a convenient way to identify birds during your next citizen science excursion? Consider the WildLab Bird iPhone app, which uses photographs, audio, and maps to help you determine which bird you’ve spotted and makes it easy to share the observation with researchers at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.

Here’s how it works: Visit the WildLab project description in the Sci4Cits project finder, where you’ll find links to download the app and start a free WildLab account. Using the app, choose the type of habitat where you are, then pick a silhouette like that of the bird you’ve sighted. Next, the app lets you scroll through pre-loaded images of birds and select the one that most closely resembles the bird you’ve spotted. Just to be sure you have the right one, you can also hear the bird’s song and see a map of its range. When you click the “submit” button, your observation, along with date, time, and location, is saved to your online WildLab account. From there, you can create a record of sightings to upload into Cornell’s eBird database. Simple as that.

While you’re on the WildLab site, be sure to check out the free supplemental materials aligned to curricula and educational activities.

In the near future, the WildLab plans to release an app for monitoring horseshoe crabs–sure to be a big hit with fans of those critters (like me!). We’ll let you know when that app is available.