With the objective of exchanging experiences among the different actors involved in bird monitoring activities the 6th Meeting of the Community Bird Monitors Network of the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) took place in Chetumal from September 13 to 15, 2018.

Attendants included the Coordination of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI, Mexico), the Coordination of Corridors and Biological Resources of CONABIO, community monitors and regional coordinators from Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Costa Rica, professors and students of the Technological Institute of Chetumal, researchers from the Humboldt Institute, the Cornell Ornithological Laboratory (CLO) and Virginia Tech.

The meeting included presentations, posters, field trips to observe birds (led by the network of Mayan Jays, a community monitoring group, and NABCI staff), a children’s drawing contest and a visual identification of bird species contest. The event was organized by CONABIO and the Cornell Ornithological Laboratory.

The high attendance to the event of participants from Central America and Mexico reflects the international interest in bird monitoring. It is expected that this Network of Monitors will increase in number, hand in hand with the use of the eBird tool, a software that serves to generate data such as the status of bird populations, their behavior and evolution.