Date: 3/17/26 5:54 pm From: David Suddjian <dsuddjian...> Subject: [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
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUSDQZrq-eM>
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.
*Contact me directly at <dsuddjian...> <dsuddjian...>if 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
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