Did you find a robin's egg in your yard this year and look up to follow the chirping you heard admid the foliage? Report it to Mass Audubon and help enhance our understanding of how populations of Massachusetts' breeding birds have changed in the previous three decades. Noted local birder Marj Rines reported that scores of volunteers are now fanning out across 970 ten-square-mile blocks to spot nesting birds and collect data on them for the Massachusetts Audubon Breeding Bird Atlas II. After five breeding seasons, the new data will be compared to that collected for the 1974-1979 breeding seasons, detailed in the first Atlas. MBBA II will serve a critical role in documenting population trends – not only of the rarest species, but of all of the 200-plus breeding birds of the state. For information on how to join this vast and amazing volunteer effort, please visit MassBird.org, which is coordinated by Rines, or contact the Massachusetts Audubon Society project website.
