Journal of Field Ornithology | Editor’s Pick (Volume 96, Issue 1)

We are glad to present this new section, where for each new issue of the JFO, one of the journal’s co-Editors-in-Chief will highlight their favorite paper.

This edition is courtesy of Dr. Mark E. Hauber.

The selected paper was:

“Population estimates of shorebirds on the Atlantic Coast of southern South America generated from large-scale, simultaneous, volunteer-led surveys” by Fernando Faria, Joaquín Aldabe, Juliana Bosi de Almeida, Juan Bonanno, Leandro Bugoni, Robert Clay, Julian Garcia-Walther, Agustina González, Arne Lesterhuis, Guilherme Tavares Nunes, Nathan Senner (2025, Issue 1, JFO).

Mark says:

“Surveying highly mobile animals, including migratory or vagrant shorebirds, to estimate their population sizes, becomes even more difficult when the distribution of those species is highly clumped. As such, broad-scaled efforts, including community scientists, may come handy to conduct such surveys. Faria et al. (JFO 2025) capitalizes on a volunteer-based, quasi-simultaneous survey design along the Atlantic coast of South America, to estimate both Nearctic migrant and Neotropical resident breeding shorebirds’ population sizes.

**Fig. 1.** Map of southeastern South America where simultaneous shorebird surveys were conducted from 20 to 29 January 2019. Distinct colors indicate division of coastal regions used in the sampling design. Colored region width is illustrative and does not represent the 5 km buffer applied to the coast in the analyses. AR, Argentina; UY, Uruguay; and BR, Brazil.

**Fig. 2.** Relative abundance and distribution of Neotropical (blue) and Nearctic (red) shorebirds counted during the simultaneous surveys conducted between 20 and 29 January 2019. The size of points is not directly comparable between maps. AR, Argentina; BR, Brazil; and UY, Uruguay.

The results are complex, with the former species having decreased in numbers, while the latter showing a robust first-ever estimate of population sizes. Community and volunteer-based science, once again, serves field ornithology well in this study.”

The results of this study were recently published in the Journal of Field Ornithology:

Faria, F. A., J. Aldabe, J. B. Almeida, J. J. Bonanno, L. Bugoni, R. P. Clay, J. García-Walther, A. González, A. J. Lesterhuis, G. T. Nunes, and N. R. Senner. 2025. Population estimates of shorebirds on the Atlantic Coast of southern South America generated from large-scale, simultaneous, volunteer-led surveys. Journal of Field Ornithology 96(1):2. https://doi.org/10.5751/JFO-00584-960102.