Each spring, over 2,500 skilled amateur birders and professional biologists volunteer to participate in the North American BBS. Several Vermont BBS survey routes are currently available for adoption.
The requirements for participation are:
- Access to suitable transportation to complete a roadside survey route.
- Good hearing and eyesight.
- The ability to identify all breeding birds in the area by sight and sound. Knowledge of bird songs is extremely important, because most birds counted on these surveys are only heard, not seen!
- Willingness to commit to multiple years of participation. Consistency in observer is important for BBS data analysis.
If you meet these criteria and would like to participate in the Vermont BBS, please contact Megan Massa, Vermont coordinator for BBS. New BBS participants must also successfully complete the BBS Methodology Training Program before their data will be used in any BBS analyses. The training program is available from the national BBS offices and the state, provincial, and territorial coordinators.
Perhaps you have not quite mastered hundreds of bird songs and calls yet? Try Mountain Birdwatch with a small suite of just 10 birds to monitor. Or perhaps you’d like to contribute to our understandings of bird populations, but in a more casual way? Check out Vermont eBird, an amazing crowd-sourced database of bird observations from across the state and around the world.
