[cobirds] North American Breeding Bird Survey -- Adopt a survey route!

Get Involved in Colorado! Adopt a BBS survey route!

It's half an hour before sunrise, as you stand beside your car on a quiet rural road. The eastern sky is lightening and birds are singing. You have just begun your first three-minute-long point count at stop #1 of your Breeding Bird Survey route – the first of 50 stops you will visit today. Lark Bunting is singing, three Horned Larks are larking, Mourning Dove, Western Meadowlarks, a pair of Western Kingbirds, and there's a Say's Phoebe calling near that farmhouse.  It is going to be another fun survey!

Thus begins one person's volunteer effort for the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). The BBS is a long-term, large-scale, international avian monitoring program initiated in 1966 to track the status and trends of North American bird populations. Each year from late May to early July skilled birders collect bird population data along roadside survey routes. Each survey route is 24.5 miles long with stops situated 0.5-mile apart. At each stop, a 3-minute point count is conducted and every bird seen or heard within a 0.25-mile radius or heard is recorded. Routes are surveyed just once each season, following the same roads and making the same stops each year. Over 4100 survey routes in the continental U.S. and Canada provide an index of population abundance that is used to estimate population trends and relative abundances at various geographic scales. See what it is all about here in this video: Ups and Downs in Colorado

Colorado hosts 136 BBS survey routes distributed all across the state. Many routes have faithful observers who have been covering them each year for many years. Other routes experience a natural turnover of observers, as one retires from the route and another birder picks it up. And some routes have not been surveyed at all for several years.  Colorado now has 20 "vacant" routes that need skilled volunteer observers who can commit to adopting a route for at least three years. (See list below)

Requirements for participation are: (1) access to transportation to complete a survey, (2) good hearing and eyesight, and (3) the ability to identify the breeding birds in the area by sight and sound. Knowledge of bird songs and calls is extremely important, because most birds counted on the surveys are detected by sound. A BBS survey requires about five hours to complete, plus travel to and from the route location.

Can you volunteer to adopt a survey route? Learn more about the BBS here https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/index.cfm and view available Colorado routes here https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/RouteMap/Map.cfm 

Contact me directly at dsuddjian@gmail.comif you are interested in a route or have questions. Route requests made via the BBS webpage may not reach me.  Thanks!

David Suddjian, Littleton

Colorado State Coordinator for the BBS

Updated Mar 6, 2026
Route #	Route Name	County Location
5	Briggsdale	Weld, Morgan
20	Boyero	Lincoln
37	Waverly	Yuma
44	Bethune	Kit Carson
52	Dolores Riv	Dolores
55	Alamosa	Conejos, Alamosa
125	San Luis	Conejos, Alamosa
126	Cone Mtn	Las Animas
153	Rio Grande Rs	Mineral, Hinsdale
207	Amherst	Phillips, Sedgwick
210	Thomasville	Eagle, Pitkin
214	Kirk	Kit Carson
220	Haswell	Bent, Kiowa
307	Julesburg	Sedgwick, Logan
314	Burlington	Kit Carson, Yuma
321	Sheridan Lake	Kiowa, Prowers
322	Mcphee Res.	Dolores Montezuma
324	South Fork	Rio Grande
372	Haycamp Mesa	Montezuma
373	Lizard Head Pass	San Miguel, Dolores

--
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group.
To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds
* All posts should be signed with the poster's full name and city. Include bird species and location in the subject line when appropriate.
* Join Colorado Field Ornithologists https://cobirds.org/membership/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CAGj6Roq-3gies0YMC2PrPF4uSYDVdvHN4x0VFqabHp%2BCB%3DfGYw%40mail.gmail.com.