On Saturday, October 4, 22 birders awoke before sunrise, loaded into vans, and began our journey from Northern Virginia to Cape May, NJ, our eyes set on this faraway destination perfectly aligned with the Atlantic Flyway, one of the four “avian superhighways” in North America.
Breeding bird atlases have a long history in the United States, where they are typically conducted at the state level. Like road atlases, at their core they are centered around maps, but the maps relate to the geographic distribution and abundance of breeding bird species—that is, where they are found on the landscape and in what numbers.
The second Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas, known as VABBA2, is one of the largest citizen science projects in Virginia’s history. Over the last five years, more than 1,400 volunteer birders have gathered data on breeding activity of over 200 species throughout the Commonwealth, resulting in over 6 million records.
