Join Van and others from the team at California Bird Atlas to learn more about the upcoming launch of California's first statewide Breeding Bird Atlas - an initiative already completed in 44 other states. While California has traditionally conducted Atlases at the county level, only 15 of the state's 58 counties have published them, representing less than 17% of the state's land area. Furthermore, 14 of these 15 counties are either coastal or adjacent to the San Francisco Bay Estuary - underscoring an extreme bias towards densely populated regions. Today, powerful data platforms like eBird and a statewide surge in birdwatching participation have finally made a comprehensive Atlas for all of California possible. 

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From 2026 to 2030, atlasers—made up of volunteers and paid field technicians—will record observations through a custom-built version of eBird, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Because some species breed in every month of the year, data collection will run continuously from January 1, 2026, through December 31, 2030. The resulting dataset will be the most comprehensive and standardized record of California’s breeding birds ever assembled. The nine-year project, including five years of fieldwork and four years of data analysis and writing, carries an estimated budget of $6.5 million and will be the most ambitious Breeding Bird Atlas ever undertaken in the United States.