Volunteers Made 4.7M Observations for the North Carolina Bird Atlas! Now What?

Over the course of five years, 3,525 volunteers spent 234,495 hours counting birds in every corner of the state. That’s the equivalent of nearly 10,000 days of volunteers scouring the state for courting and nesting birds, from remote riversides to crowded parks to sandy beaches. Now, researchers are going through the data to see what it can tell us about the birds that call our state home. 

“We are extremely grateful for every single birder who traveled across the state, including extremely rural areas, to count birds,” Audubon North Carolina executive director Curtis Smalling said. “We engaged communities, landowners, citizen scientists, and partners around a large-scale conservation effort in a way we never have before.” 

Going Through the Data 

From 2021 to 2026, volunteers recorded where and what species of birds were feeding young, gathering nesting material, courting, defending territories, building nests, incubating eggs, feeding chicks, and more. These are all behaviors that allow scientists to confirm, with varying degrees of certainty, that a bird is breeding in our state. 

Volunteers submitted 332,343 checklists with 4,774,640 breeding observations. Of those observations, volunteers confirmed 73,839 breeding pairs of birds. In all, this community of Atlasers has assembled one of the most comprehensive snapshots of North Carolina’s birds ever created. 

Now that we know where specific species are currently breeding and spending the winter, we can direct conservation efforts to the places and species that need it most. Results will inform conservation planning, strengthen habitat management decisions, support funding proposals, and guide bird conservation work for years to come. 

That’s what researchers will be working to figure out over the next few months. “First, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission team will go through and fact check observations and pull out any outliers,” said Smalling. “Then they’ll work with partners to decide how best to share final results.” 

But volunteers don’t have to wait long to see their observations making a real difference for birds in our state. According to Anderson, the atlas spurred an estimated 81 percent increase in North Carolina eBird checklists compared to the previous five years. Already, your observations are being used to strengthen range and population maps accessible to everyone with an eBird account. 

Stay Involved in Community Science 

We encourage you to keep submitting eBird checklists and get involved with other community science initiatives.  

Participate in the annual Christmas Bird Count—the nation’s longest-running community science project which fuels Audubon’s work throughout the year. This count occurs December 14 to January 5 every season. 

In February, you can join the Great Backyard Bird Count which is a free, fun, and easy event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of bird populations. 

From counting Chimney Swifts to going Lights Out during spring and fall migration to becoming a member of a local Audubon chapter, there are plenty of ways for you to help birds. 

See how you can make a difference for birds in North Carolina here.