Welcome to Spring Atlasing! Despite what the calendar says, NC birders know that many of our resident birds don’t wait for the solstice to announce that spring has officially arrived. The days are getting longer and the air warmer. The season of tree bark gray and residual brown is giving way to flashes of Redbud fuchsia, Jessamine gold, and Trillium burgundy. And the emerging sounds of the dawn chorus are once again making it worth skipping the snooze button, pouring our coffee into a travel mug, and carrying it with us to a priority block to record what we hear. With another great season of Winter Atlasing in the rearview, we have officially entered Year 4 of the North Carolina Bird Atlas!
March is the perfect month to begin dipping your toes into Atlasing if you’re new, or getting back into the swing of spring if you’re an old hat. Most of our migrants have not yet returned, and many of our residents are just beginning to establish territories, stake out nest sites, and begin nest construction. This is a great time to familiarize yourself with our early breeders, the habitats in which they breed, and the types of nests they build. Some of our earliest breeders include Brown-headed Nuthatch, Pine Warbler, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Eastern Bluebird, and most woodpeckers, hawks, and owls.
During the winter season, most of our Atlasing is focused on presence. One of our primary research questions can be simplified to “Who is where, and when are they there?” But as we enter the breeding season, we need to add “What are they doing?” to that question. In order to form and solidify our baseline knowledge, and fill in our knowledge gaps, we must document breeding behaviors. If you are not familiar with or need a refresher on how to identify breeding behaviors, the first step is to become acquainted with eBird breeding codes, found here.
One of the best tips for transitioning from winter to spring Atlasing is to slow down. In January, you may have been running a checklist, heard a couple Brown-headed Nuthatches squeaking in a nearby tree, added them to your list, and moved on. But now, in March, take the time to practice getting binoculars on those nuthatches. Watch them for a few minutes. Are they entering a cavity repeatedly? Are they pulling bark strips off a cedar or carrying pine needles? A Red-tailed Hawk just soared overhead, and you were able to ID it without binoculars. But were you able to see if it was carrying a small branch or some twigs? When you see a woodpecker on a dead tree snag, take a minute to observe what it is doing. Is it moving around, peeling up bark, and foraging? Or is it staying stationary, boring deep into the tree, and excavating a single cavity? When you’ve located birds performing actions associated with probable or confirmed breeding behaviors, continue to watch for a few minutes. Once you become familiar with how they behave while performing these activities, it becomes easier to spot going forward.
As you plan where to Atlas this spring, take a look at the effort map, found here. Priority blocks shaded in yellow or light green have very little effort and need attention. These blocks are also the most likely to lack breeding codes for our common and resident breeders. Therefore, spending time in early spring learning and refreshing in these blocks can provide extremely valuable data. You can also type a specific species into the species map on the Explore page to see where we are lacking higher level breeding codes for them. For example, looking at the map for American Woodcock detections shows just how much opportunity there is for locating and coding their breeding sites and courtship displays. Since February/March is the peak time to find them displaying, they are an excellent bird to practice using habitat to target and locate certain species. Check out our recent social media post and previous Quackalacky article for more info and tips on how to locate possible Woodcock breeding sites.
Slow birding focused on behavioral observations is a great way to increase birding skills. And spending time observing individual birds, getting to know their unique traits, can be some of the most rewarding birdwatching we do as hobby birders. Submitting these observations to the Atlas portal, knowing that you are contributing scientific data to inform a greater understanding of how we can better our conservation efforts is just a bonus! This project would not work without the efforts of our dedicated volunteers. Thank you for your contributions, and happy Spring Atlasing!