BirdLab : A laboratory in the garden to study bird behaviour
When autumn arrives, many of us put our bird feeders back up, newly stocked with seeds and fat balls. In doing so, we create feeding areas where birds engage in a variety of ecological interactions: stealing, interference, but also cooperation and facilitation, all with a guaranteed food supply but not without risk, as cats lurk nearby...
With the BirdLab programme, garden feeders have also become research tools, providing us with information about interactions at the feeder. This fun app, launched in 2014 by Vigie-Nature and the National Museum of Natural History, uses participatory science to collect data.
Carmen Bessa-Gomes, a lecturer and researcher in ecology at AgroParisTech, will look back on 10 years of results from the BirdLab programme, with observations made on almost a thousand feeders in France.
Carmen wrote a thesis on the importance of animal behaviour for the dynamics of small populations. She then went on to work on vulture foraging strategies, particularly the importance of knowing the location of feeding sites. Since then, she has continued to take an interest in bird foraging, this time at feeding sites such as bird feeders in our gardens.
This conference is part of the participatory science exhibition: "Together at the heart of science", which runs from 7 November to 6 January 2026 at Lumen.
For any questions: david.delton [at] ens-paris-saclay.fr
LumenWhen autumn arrives, many of us put our bird feeders back up, newly stocked with seeds and fat balls. In doing so, we create feeding areas where birds engage in a variety of ecological interactions: stealing, interference, but also cooperation and facilitation, all with a guaranteed food supply but not without risk, as cats lurk nearby...
With the BirdLab programme, garden feeders have also become research tools, providing us with information about interactions at the feeder. This fun app, launched in 2014 by Vigie-Nature and the National Museum of Natural History, uses participatory science to collect data.
Carmen Bessa-Gomes, a lecturer and researcher in ecology at AgroParisTech, will look back on 10 years of results from the BirdLab programme, with observations made on almost a thousand feeders in France.
Carmen wrote a thesis on the importance of animal behaviour for the dynamics of small populations. She then went on to work on vulture foraging strategies, particularly the importance of knowing the location of feeding sites. Since then, she has continued to take an interest in bird foraging, this time at feeding sites such as bird feeders in our gardens.
This conference is part of the participatory science exhibition: "Together at the heart of science", which runs from 7 November to 6 January 2026 at Lumen.
For any questions: david.delton [at] ens-paris-saclay.fr