For the Birds is a community-engaged research and design project that looks at plastic waste in the nests of birds living along Dallas–Fort Worth’s creeks and rivers. It asks what birds are showing us about our environment, and how design can make that visible. The project is a collaboration with the Trinity River Audubon Center.
Nests Act as Bio-Indicator
Plastic litter in our urban environments, particularly in greenbelts and riparian corridors, is being integrated into the lifecycle of local migratory birds. Often unseen by residents it is easy to fail to see the connection between trash in the streams and direct harm to animals and birds in the area.
We often think of nature as a place outside ourselves, somewhere we go to visit. But we share the landscape with possums, insects, birds, trees, grasses, rocks, and water, and none of them recognize the boundaries humans imagine.
When it rains, water carries what’s in our yards and streets into the canals, creeks and rivers, and eventually out to the ocean. From our sprinklers through the riparian corridors, out to the coasts a direct line.
This project treats birds as witnesses to human behavior, not only as recipients of a world we’ve altered. A nest records what a bird found nearby, and so it also records us.
In the city, rain washes streets, parking lots and alleys, and carries debris into riparian corridors, the quiet, brush-filled green spaces where many birds make their homes. Runoff is one way plastic becomes nesting material.
Birds are also now building with plastic because more plastic exists in the world than ever before. This is a new behavior, and our waste has made it possible.
For the Birds combines found nests, citizen-science observations and design and data visualization methods to make an invisible problem visible. The work will be presented at the Trinity River Audubon Center and is part of a course in information visualization design at the University of Texas at Arlington, where students will work to build visualizations from project data.