Mini Breeding Bird Survey

A Mini Breeding Bird Survey (MBBS) is a small-scale version of the full Breeding Bird Survey organized each year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service throughout North America. An MBBS focuses on one county. Volunteers count birds seen or heard along randomly chosen routes on secondary roads. The objective is to determine the distribution of breeding birds in the county and to assess any year-to-year changes in their numbers.

Importance

The following visualization shows trends for 4 of the 100+ species observed in over twenty years of our survey. As you can see,

• species such as Wood Thrush and Northern Bobwhite have declined;
• species such as Eastern Bluebird have no obvious trend;
• species such as Summer Tanager appear to be increasing in abundance.

View more detailed results and analysis here.

Qualifications

You need not be an expert birder to participate in the MBBS! We just ask that you can:

• identify common breeding birds by song or calls as well as by sight
• get up early one morning in May/June to drive (or have someone drive you) a survey route
• participate (or plan to) for multiple years
• submit observations by eBird

If you have questions, please contact Allen Hurlbert or Bradley Saul.