Scientifically-designed bird atlases began in the UK in the 1960s. Dozens of bird atlases have been produced since, at scales ranging from counties, to countries, to continents.
For a list of projects in the US, click here. Most projects have focused on breeding birds, but some have tackled winter or migration patterns. Most simply document where each species occurs, but some also estimate abundance. And, while the focus has largely been on documenting distributions, most have also made some attempt to explain the distributions in relation to habitats, land use, and other factors. Increasingly, atlases are being repeated with a primary goal of determining whether and how bird distributions are changing. Continue reading “Our History”