Transforming our communities into places where birds flourish.
Over the past century, urbanization has taken, fragmented, and transformed ecologically productive land with sterile lawns and exotic ornamental plants. We’ve introduced walls of glass, toxic pesticides, and domestic predators. The human-dominated landscape no longer supports functioning ecosystems or provides healthy places for birds.
Audubon’s Bird-friendly Communities strives to provide food, shelter, safe passage, and places for birds to raise their young, through our Plants for Birds and Bird-friendly Buildings programs. As we work to create healthy habitats, we also work to ensure safe spaces for our feathered friends.
By simply choosing native plants for our yards and public spaces, we can restore vital habitats for birds in our communities and help them adapt and survive in the face of climate change. Audubon’s Plants for Birds program is designed to enable anyone to have a positive impact by planting for birds, right where they live.
The mission of our Bird-Friendly Buildings programs is to ensure a safer built environment for our favorite feathered friends. Glass and lights present major hazards to birds, killing hundreds of millions of birds each year. Birds hit buildings at all hours. At night migrating birds can be distracted by bright lights in our cities. During the day the problem is reflection or other confusing aspects of glass. Audubon chapters, centers, and programs across the country are working to make buildings safer for birds.
Bring more birds to your home with native plants! Visit the native plants database to create a customized list of plants native to your area, get connected to your local Audubon and native plant nurseries, and help us get 1 million plants in the ground for birds.
From communication towers and tall buildings to residential windows and glass doors, birds face a multitude of dangers as they navigate our built environment. Simple solutions can make your community and the skies safer for birds.
I was feeling discouraged in life, when I began volunteering at a local park. That’s when the project’s leader, Eleanor Osgood, changed my outlook.
We break it down for you, and provide some alternatives to plants you might have in your backyard or local box store.
Protecting birds and providing them with abundant habitat and safe passage is achievable with PROs – Proclamation, Resolutions and Ordinances. Connect with your local Audubon chapter, center, or sanctuary, to learn more about PROs for native plants and bird-friendly buildings or reach out to bfc@audubon.org.
Even amidst the pandemic, Menunkatuck Audubon Society and its partners found a way to establish New Haven’s first native plant nursery.
By installing water-saving appliances and less thirsty native plants, this Colorado community saved 15 million gallons of water in just one year.
Spurred by a mass collision event, Audubon chapters and partners lead a Lights Out program during spring and fall migration.
Whether it's renting goats to clear out invasive plants or making a new assisted-living facility greener, Huntington-Oyster Bay Audubon is making a difference.
Collage at top of page: Photos, clockwise from top left: Plants for Birds sign, Luke Franke/Audubon ; Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Randy Streufert/Audubon Photography Awards; Pulling invasive plants at Montezuma Audubon Center in New York, Luke Franke/Audubon; Bird-friendly window stickers at Chattahoochee Nature Center, Adam Betuel/Georgia Audubon Society; Native bee on an Erigeron speciosus wildflower, Evan Barrientos/Audubon Rockies; Northern Mockingbird and Ilex verticillata, Barbara Driscoll/Audubon Photography Awards; Bullock's Oriole forages for insects in Crataegus, or Hawthorn, Evan Barrientos/Audubon Rockies; Planting native plants, Evan Barrientos/Audubon Rockies; Peregrine Falcon in front of Philadelphia's city hall, George Armistead
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