Seattle Audubon
for birds and nature

Vision Monitoring species diversity in urban wildlife habitats of King County through the work of community scientists, and empowering the community to become advocates for wildlife habitat.

How It Works

Volunteers conduct bird surveys at multiple points along a loop once a month in Seattle city parks. The data are entered into a master database accessible online. These data serve to assist Seattle Audubon's advocacy efforts in land-use decisions. Learn more about the survey protocol here.

The project's name includes "neighborhood" because the project enlists volunteers primarily from the neighborhood surrounding the wildlife habitat being surveyed. The intent is to educate Seattle Audubon members about the habitat close to their homes, to observe what birds live there as the seasons change, and in doing so, to encourage members to become advocates for the wildlife "in their neighborhoods" or communities.

Data Entry Website: www.nbpsurvey.org

In July 2018, we released a new website that allows NBP participants to enter their data online to provide us at Seattle Audubon almost immediate access to the information they collected on their survey. This new website not only hosts our data entry portal, but is an avenue to refresh yourself on our protocol, print off data sheets, and explore your survey history statistics and park-specific statistics. NBP data should be entered on a monthly basis shortly after your survey. Data enterers can refer to the data entry instructions or contact science@seattleaudubon.org with any questions.

Data Analysis

Restoration efforts on birds: Data from the Neighborhood Bird Project has been used to investigate the effectiveness of restoration work in four of Seattle's urban parks - Carkeek Park, Discovery Park, Golden Gardens and Magnuson Park. The report that was produced from this analysis is entitled: Impacts of Habitat Restoration and the Status of Avian Communities in Seattle City Parks. download the report (1650 KB, pdf)

Rufous and Anna's Hummingbird populations: University of Washington undergraduate, Lauren Rowe, analyzed Rufous and Anna's Hummingbird presence data from the Neighborhood Bird Project, Christmas Bird Count, North American Breeding Bird Survey, and other datasets to learn about how these two species populations have changed in suburban and urban areas of Western Washington. This report was entitled: Rufous (Selasphorus rufus) and Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) population changes in Western Washington. download the report (943 KB, pdf)

Current project survey sites:

View Seattle Audubon - Neighborhood Bird Project in a larger map

Interested in participating? Contact science@seattleaudubon.org if you would like more information about the Neighborhood Bird Project.

Learn more about birds on the SAS Science pages

Community Science	Resources