More than two decades ago, birders fanned out across Virginia to search for species that bred and nested in the mountains, coastal plain and barrier islands. They diligently tracked breeding behavior from 1985 to 1989 on a landmark project guided by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland and co-sponsored by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the Virginia Society of Ornithology.

Now, after a long pause, a large-scale effort is underway to update the records. The Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas 2, a five-year series of surveys to identify all species that breed throughout the commonwealth, started last year and will continue through the 2020 breeding season.

“This project is on track to be the largest citizen science survey in Virginia, using hundreds of volunteers to gather information,” said Ashley Peele, VABBA2 coordinator with Virginia Tech’s Conservation Management Institute. Data will be compared with information gleaned from the original survey in the 1980s to help determine how our birdlife has fared after a couple of decades of urbanization, habitat loss, energy development and climate change, Peele said.

Early last year, Peele crisscrossed the state to promote the multiyear project and now has 455 enrollees ready to begin the second-year spring and summer breeding season.