People from all walks of life attract birds to their gardens at often considerable cost: it is estimated that tens of thousands of people in Wales feed wild birds. In the Welsh village of Mynydd Llandygai, some residents are so interested in how their village interacts with its landscape and the local biodiversity, that they invited scientists from the region to come and help develop some of their ideas into research that would involve and inform the village. The results have been remarkable, as community members and university researchers have worked together to advance scientific knowledge. The inclusion of local participants in ecological research is vital, since most of the ecological challenges facing the world today are a direct result of human intervention.

Mynydd Llandygai is a village bordered by bog and upland heath, as well as a conifer plantation and woodland. Within the village there are areas of pasture, rough grazing and ponds. Set in the midst of this are the gardens of the villagers, many of which have bird feeders and nest boxes. Villagers studied the ecological value of these garden feeders; through learning about, designing, building and siting feeders and nest boxes; and recording where individual birds feed and breed around their village.

The leader of the project Dr Rachel Claire Taylor is a researcher at Bangor University, She said:

‘Birds engage human curiosity and interest at all ages and abilities. Our project aimed to involve the entire village in cutting-edge ecological research, investigating how individual birds take advantage of bird feeders, how much they move between feeders in different gardens around the village, and how many of the birds nest within the village’.

‘Everybody was invited to partake in workshops and materials were offered free of charge to each family, with extra support for disadvantaged families. This allowed people with a range of levels of interest and ability to get involved.’

This project allowed the community to be directly involved in scientific research, a process known as participatory science. Participants cooperated with university staff in the design and structure of the community-led research project; a cultural change in the ‘normal’ process of setting up and running ecological projects in the university. The community is also going to co-publish a scientific paper with the researchers.

Dr Taylor said:

‘This collaborative project represents a chance to change the conventional top down culture of field study design and introduces an interactive, inclusive scientific response to a question posed by a local community, led and partly performed by that community, and reported back to them in such as way as they consider appropriate and interesting.’

Lead: Dr Rachel Taylor, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Bangor University