Audubon's Birds and Science Information
Explore Audubon's Birds and Science Information to learn more about birds, the challenges they face, and the conservation efforts to protect them. Discover how you can participate in these efforts in your backyard and beyond. Whether you are a beginning birdwatcher or an experienced ornithologist, our science staff offers you resources, tools, and projects to match your ability, time constraints, interests, and priorities. Please visit us often because we are frequently adding new features and information about our growing programs.
Pennsylvania's 2nd Breeding Bird Atlas Project
While walking or birdwatching in this spring and summer, consider keeping careful notes of your bird sightings and contribute these to the 2nd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas Project.
Begun in 2004, this is a five-year effort to collect observations and information about the nesting bird species in the state. The first Atlas of Breeding Birds in Pennsylvania was published in 1992, based on observations collected by more than 2,000 volunteers. Twenty years later, the 2nd Breeding Bird Atlas (BBA), a joint project of the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Carnegie Museum of Natural History, promises to involve more volunteers and to provide a greatly expanded and improved database on the Commonwealth's nesting birds. Wildlife trail users can help this effort by recording their observations and logging their sightings on the Breeding Bird Atlas.
Contributing to the BBA is as simple as marking on the river trail map the location of an observed bird species and the breeding behaviors that it exhibits. A series of BBA codes related to breeding behaviors range from birds seen in suitable nesting habitat (an "X") to birds observed showing territorial behavior ("T"). Visit the Breeding Bird Atlas website prior to birdwatching to gather special BBA "block" topographic maps, field data sheets for recording sightings, bird checklists, a list of breeding codes, and more.
More than a million bird records will be gathered as a result of the project, and your walks along the Susquehanna River Birding and Wildlife Trail can help to document the value and importance of open spaces to the health of Pennsylvania's birdlife.
