Monday Bird Report: 4 Key Points about the Bird Atlas, Including How You Can Help

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are now nesting throughout Connecticut.

June 22, 2020 — The Connecticut Bird Atlas project, now in its third year of field work, is a remarkable collaborative effort.

More than 700 volunteers collect information on the whereabouts of Connecticut’s birds.

Field staff fill in the gaps and conduct surveys to deepen the data.

Scientists from academia and the state government oversee and analyze the work.

Members of organizations like the Connecticut Audubon Society help sponsor the project.

The goal is to determine which birds occur where, which times of year those birds are here, and whether they’re nesting and raising young. On top of the first Bird Atlas, which used data collected from 1982 to ‘86, it will help clarify bird population trends.

Professor Chris S. Elphick explained it in an article he wrote for our 2017 Connecticut State of the Birds report: “How many Cerulean Warblers are there in Connecticut? Is it possible that Black Rail still nest in the state? Where are the most important areas for Wood Thrush? Have Belted Kingfishers declined? These, and dozens of questions like them, have been debated in Connecticut ornithological circles in recent years, and – although there is lots of informed speculation – the answer is often that we simply do not know.

“The Connecticut Bird Atlas … will address many of these questions, providing a firmer scientific basis for conservation decisions throughout the state.”

Elphick, who is one of the project leaders, is a professor in the University of Connecticut’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Institute of Biological Risk. I interviewed him on the phone on Wednesday, June 17, and edited his answers slightly for clarity and conciseness.

Here are four key takeaways: project status, new insights, what’s left to be done, how you can help.

Can you bring us up to date on where the Atlas project stands?
“We’re in the third breeding season. Originally we had planned three years of field work. But we extended field work for a year because of the pandemic — because back in the early spring we didn’t want to encourage people to be going out. So we are now planning for a full breeding season next year.

“There are definitely gaps in the data still. A typical breeding atlas runs for five or six years so we always knew it was going to be tight to get as much done as we wanted to. We’re combining data collection with analysis methods that weren’t available in the 1980s to fill a lot of the gaps but we still want to make sure we have good coverage.

“We have very good data from coastal areas, built-up places where lots of people live, and from birding hot spots, and much less data from eastern Connecticut, far northern Connecticut, and a few other places. An extra year will help us fill those gaps. We have at least some data for all but 8 of the 601 blocks. By the end of the project we’ll have at least some data for every block.”

What have you learned? Have there been surprises, either good or bad?
“To a large extent it will reinforce what we think we know and will highlight places that are important for the species in trouble, but I think there will be species that we have a much better idea of how much they are in trouble.

“Canada Warbler, for example. We knew they were down but nobody had a real idea of how much. The same with Eastern Screech-Owl. We still have shockingly few blocks where we have screech owls compared to the situation in the 1980s.

“And then Eastern Meadowlark, which everybody knows were in trouble, but even so it will be a shock how few places they’ve been found. We really are down to just a handful of blocks. Of all the grasslands birds, they are one of the first to disappear.”

“On the upside, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker — we kind of knew it had expanded. Back in the 1980s, they were just in the northwest corner and were known to have spread south and east a little. They’re now all the way to the coast in western Connecticut. My guess is that what’s happening is that even though the amount of forest has declined, the remaining forest is maturing. Pileated Woodpecker also expanded across the state, probably for the same reason.”

How are you filling in the data gaps?
“We’ve had paid field technicians for the last two summers who have done much more formal standardized surveys designed to give us a better handle on the numbers of birds — not just where but how many. This year we had to cancel those formal surveys, which would have started in April, because of the pandemic. Luckily, we are now able to hire those techs for a few weeks to help augment the volunteer effort that is the core of the study.

“Those four people are all starting for us this week. We will have them go to places where we’re really lacking data and fill some of those gaps. We also have volunteers who are very active and keen to get out there – some of whom are also helping to fill gaps.

“In general, places where we have less data now are the places we had less data in the 1980s. They are always the places that seem unexciting. In Connecticut it’s often the places where there’s just a bunch of second growth forest. But there are land trust preserves in those places; in some places there are fields full of bobolinks. I visited three blocks in the last three weeks and found bobolinks nesting in places we had no bobolink records for. In other words, there’s cool birds to be found everywhere.”

How can members of Connecticut Audubon help?
“People worry that they need to make a big commitment, and we love it when people do that but they really don’t have to. We also need records for robins or wrens or bluebirds, chimney swifts, or the owls that people hear hooting from their yards. If people have those kinds of records, even if they’re the only records they submit, it’s really helpful.

“They can submit on eBird (be sure to include breeding codes and share the checklist with ctbirdatlas) or use the data forms on the Atlas website. We recognize this is not a job for people, and we want it to be fun. If it’s not fun, they shouldn’t be doing it. The idea is to do something useful but to get pleasure out of it.”

You can find the Connecticut Bird Atlas website here. The page with information about who to contact and how to submit data is here. — Tom Anderse, Communications Director