Science and sport are two different areas of human activity. Typically, science supports sport and helps one achieve better results. In Bird Race, it is the other way round: sports competition is used to collect scientific data about bird distribution in Poland. The event is patterned on the bird races in Western Europe, during which birds are watched by small groups for 24 hours.
The Bird Race has been held since 2009 by Jacek Betleja and his edredon.com.pl shop. Since 2016, OTOP has had the pleasure to co-organise this event, which considerably changed the way of observation collection and summary. Birds are recorded with the NaturaList application, which operates on mobile devices. It allows to write down bird sightings in the form of single records or lists of species. Each record contains a precise location and can be sent in real time to a special website for collection of data on bird observations www.ornitho.pl.
Teams of birdwatchers are welcome to participate!