Thank you. That's a wonderful question.
One of the really amazing things about ornithology is that a tremendous amount of the total knowledge of ornithological...or what's going on with all the birds everywhere comes from citizen science or non-professionals. There are an awful lot of ornithologists out there who do wonderful work and are also really good birdwatchers, but the great majority of the data that are collected—and certainly the vast majority of the data that come in through eBird and from most of the people who participate in the Christmas bird count—are from non-professional citizen scientists.
Just being out there and noticing things and getting.... The more people go out, the more they have the ability to notice something new and different. First you need to learn the chickadees, the cardinals, the tufted titmice, the starlings and the house sparrows, but then, suddenly, you start to notice other things as well. The same is true, I'm sure, in astronomy, and it's also definitely true in terms of botany and other fields.
Just having people out there.... More and more through iNaturalist, eBird, the Christmas Bird Count and all these other citizen science programs, people are able to contribute to datasets that can actually then be utilized by researchers who want to look into what's happening in the environment. It's not only with regard to birds but basically all fields.