Finding fulfillment in Project FeederWatch and other citizen-scientist efforts
The wild side comes naturally to Jim Hantak.
"I was always a nature nut," he said. "I grew up in North Riverside on a dead-end street."
The street ended at a forest preserve. There's good reason he says, "I grew up with nature all around me."
That may also help explain why for 31 years he has participated in Project FeederWatch.
"I just love the outdoors, hiking, fishing, golfing, camping and, recently, geocaching," he said.
It seems apt for Hantak to do FeederWatch, one of many citizen-scientist projects in recent decades, where citizens gather raw data that scientific professionals then compile and study. In essence, citizens become the eyes and ears for professionals.
FeederWatch (feederwatch.org ) is counting birds observed around your feeders. The survey runs from November to April in the United States and Canada. It is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Birds Canada.
The project grew out of Erica Dunn establishing the Ontario Bird Feeder Survey in 1976. A decade later, it expanded to the United States through the Cornell Lab. In the winter of 1987-88, FeederWatch began with more than 4,000 participants. In 2024-25, 34,711 registered, including 836 from Illinois.
Hantak and his wife Paula, live in Hillside a block from the Eisenhower Expressway, were among those spiking participation.
"Paula, she is always in the bird counts," Hantak said. "It is a collaboration."
They've documented 38 different birds during 31 years of doing FeederWatch.
As to why do it, Hantak said, "It's enjoyable and something to do in the winter time. It's something I just enjoy. . . . You're also giving valuable information to the professionals."
He counts birds regularly (two days in a row weekly), then logs in and records such things as snow cover, a list of birds, whether he looked for or found dead birds, and any notable interactions, such as a downy woodpecker pushing out a house sparrow on a feeder.
As to oddities, he's seen grackles muscle out other birds. He thinks blue jays scare other birds with their raucous calls. Canada geese will scare off other birds, he suspects because of their size.
"I've seen predators come and take sparrows," he said.
Cooper's hawks take sparrows and recently a mourning dove.
On the other hand, in the heart of winter, he's seen many types of birds in one space, noting, "In the winter, they will tolerate each other."
During the summer, he does peanut and seed feeders.
In winter when doing FeederWatch, he also does a suet feeder in front. He uses what he calls bread pudding stuffed into holes bored into a log piece. Hantak makes his bird pudding from peanut butter, oatmeal (non-instant), wheat flour, cornmeal and crushed egg shells. Other recipes will include such things raisins and sunflower seeds.
House sparrows are the most common species, though he has noticed a decline in numbers recently. Other common birds are starlings, juncos, downy woodpeckers, chickadees and mourning doves, along with the occasional cardinals, hairy woodpeckers and blue jays.
As spring comes, the migrants start. Years ago, the first robin calling was the sign of spring. Now the spring sign is the arrival of red-winged blackbirds.
There have been such notables as monk parakeets in 2019-20, white-crowned and other less-common sparrows, rose-breasted grosbeaks and a female cardinal one winter with an odd feather or nub sticking out.
Hantak has done other citizen-scientist projects, too. He tried a Christmas Bird Count, but he found he enjoyed doing the Great Backyard Bird Count (birdcount.org) more. In the GBBC, citizens around the world report the birds they see over the four-day weekend ending on President's Day in February. Before he retired, Hantak took the GBBC seriously enough to usually take the Friday off to start. In 2026, the GBBC is Feb. 13-16.
I do the GBBC semi-regularly. But my favorite citizen-scientist project is BeeSpotter (beespotter.org), "a partnership between citizen-scientists and the professional science community." The University of Illinois runs the web-based portal for honey bees and bumble bees around Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri. I find it fun and useful, though I am terrible at photographing bees.
Abigail Garofalo, the new state master naturalist specialist for the Illinois Extension Service, loves Project Squirrel (projectsquirrel.org), a site for monitoring squirrels nationwide.
You can probably find a citizen-science project in your favorite area of interest. Think counting wild turkey broods or tracking pollinators and the plants that help them.
Asked if he would recommend FeederWatch to others, Hantak said, "Oh yeah, I would. But people have to be into it."