Jane Richmond counts birds in the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge near Bullhead City. "Citizen scientists" are recording observations on eBird, which lets scientists analyze trends and data on a large scale.

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BULLHEAD CITY — Helen Howard, 59, is always scanning the skies. And the bushes, marshes, desert and river.

An avid birder since childhood, she goes out in the field every chance she gets, observing, counting and making note of trends she sees at the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, Davis Camp and many area parks.

Just a week before she counted 21 ringnecks, one golden eagle, one great blue heron, about 100 turkey vultures, two osprey, one peregrine falcon, 180 coots and 10 ring-billed gulls during a kayak trip down the Colorado River. And that's just a sampling of what she saw on the water during the two-hour trip from Bullhead Community Park to Rotary Park.

After birding excursions she usually records her findings in an online database, noting location, time of day, duration of trip and weather conditions.

But Howard is not an ornithologist or avian biologist. The owner of Desert River Kayaks simply calls herself a "really committed birder."

She's one of countless "citizen scientists" who record their observations on eBird, an online checklist program that's constantly being updated by users across North America and is available free.

The real value of the program is the ability it affords scientists to analyze trends and data on a large scale, said Pat Leonard, a spokeswoman for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the institution that launched eBird in 2002.

"It just gives us a much better picture of what's going on with birds," she said.

Scientists use the information for various ongoing studies, like monitoring the impact of acid rain on birds or the incidence of the West Nile virus in American crows.

There are filters built into the program that'll flag an unusual observation, like a species that has never been recorded in a particular area before.

That's when the "gatekeepers" of the program will challenge the birder, Howard said, remembering her sighting of a snowy plover at Davis Camp.

"No one else had previously seen one and reported it in July," she said.

But after Howard sent the experts photographs she took of the bird, the observation was accepted.

Howard has been using eBird for about a year, since she read about it in Bird Watcher's Digest. She'll sometimes consult the checklist before she goes out on a bird-watching trip, looking for species she's likely to encounter during a particular season.

This time of year she's looking for the migratory green-tailed towhees, not to be confused with the Abert's towhees, a similar species that stays in the area year-round.

"It really doesn't make a difference where you go. We have a lot of birds in this area, especially in this time of year," she said. "So it's pretty exciting, in the spring or summer, to see what's coming through."

But birders aren't the only ones helping collect data for the use of experts, and similar observation tools are available to those pursuing wildlife at the other end of the spectrum.

The Nevada Sportsmen's Journal, launched this year, is a pocket-sized notebook that's being given to hunters and anglers in an effort to develop a comprehensive record of actual game populations, said Russ Mason, game division chief with the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

"Previous to the Sportsmen's Journal, we'd get (data) that made no sense," he said.

Without an immediate means to record the timing, location and quantity of game pursued, the results from questionnaires filled out at the end of the season were inconsistent.

So to better track quail, chucker, sage grouse, ruffed grouse, cottontail rabbits and jackrabbits, among others, the Nevada Department of Wildlife has made the journal available to sportsmen purchasing licenses at all department offices.

The 17 game biologists and about 30 game wardens employed by Nevada Department of Wildlife are spread thinly over vast areas, Mason said, "so it becomes very important to gather information from hunters that fan out across the state."

It still remains to be determined if the Sportsmen's Journal will yield the kind of results officials are looking for, Mason said.

It's called citizen science these days, but reports from individuals in the field aren't anything new, Mason said.

"These kinds of data," he said, "have been provided to departments for decades."