Birds & Birding

State of the Birds Report
This report is a comprehensive overview of the status of all Massachusetts breeding and wintering birds. Using data from several bird studies, State of the Birds shows trends in bird populations and distribution over many years, and highlights some success stories as well as some alarming species declines.

Important Bird Area (IBA) Program
The Important Bird Area (IBA) Program has used internationally recognized, scientifically grounded criteria to prioritize 79 sites at the landscape level that collectively capture the majority of significant avian habitats in the Commonwealth.

Coastal Waterbird Program
The Coastal Waterbird Program stewardship and monitoring efforts at nesting and staging sites for the Piping Plover and Roseate Tern are activities of global conservation importance.

The Warbler and the Birding Community E-Bulletin
Mass Audubon’s bimonthly e-newsletter, the Warbler, offers timely brief articles on birds, birding, and bird conservation. In addition, Wayne Petersen, director of Mass Audubon's Important Bird Areas (IBA) program, and his colleague Paul Baicich, put out the nationally-focused Birding Community E-bulletin every month.

Bird-a-thon
Taking place each May, Bird-a-thon is a fun competition where birders and nature enthusiasts contend to spot the most bird species in the state over the course of 24 hours while raising funds for Mass Audubon’s wildlife sanctuaries and programs.

Grassland Bird Program
Our Grassland Bird Program has defined priorities and management programs for the protection of declining populations of grassland species.  Mass Audubon has restored several grasslands sustain populations in this important guild.

Land Protection Program
The IBA Program and Mass Audubon’s land protection program identify and protect large and extensive interior upland forest tracts, and our Advocacy Department supports efforts of state agencies to protect and appropriately manage large forest blocks that protect interior forest bird species including such familiar species as Wood Thrush and Eastern Wood-Pewee that are suffering consistent declines over much of their range. 

Birds to Watch Program
Our Birds to Watch Program monitors  potentially declining species such as the Whip-poor-will and other successional and shrub land species.  Research has also been undertaken to determine  the potential habitat value of power line right-of-ways to early successional bird species.

Breeding Bird Atlas
The 2nd Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas will provide the most up-to-date information on the status of all of the Commonwealth’s breeding birds as well as record the changes in distribution and abundance of many species since Atlas 1.

Lights Out Boston
The Report identified collisions with lighted structures as a major source of avian mortality during migration, and our award-winning Lights Out Boston responds to that threat.

Conservation
Mass Audubon has aggressively reduced its carbon footprint through conservation, efficiency, and purchase and production of renewable energy to contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cape Wind Energy Project
Our integration of science and advocacy has been applied to the environmental review of the Cape Wind Energy project in Nantucket Sound in order to better understand the potential impacts of this major renewable energy project on birds using the Sound.