For the second year in a row, fifth grade students at Donegan ES in Bethlehem became ornithologists for a day recently.

Thanks to preparation by their teachers and a special art project, during the first weeks of spring approximately 80 kids learned about the bird population of Bethlehem generally and one sp ecies in particular for each student.

They then put their knowledge to work in an urban bird walk conducted with the support of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, the Lehigh Valley Audubon Society and ArtsQuest. Data that the students collected was later submitted to eBird, a project sponsored by Cornell University to gather data about birds from around the world. eBird records over 100 million bird sightings each year – now including the contributions of Donegan’s fifth-graders.