Breeding Bird Study

Goleta Coast Audubon has actively supported the Santa Barbara Audubon Society’s Breeding Bird Study. This project chronicles the breeding efforts of birds across the entire county with extremely fine spatial resolution – something missing from most citizen-science bird databases (such as eBird). To date, more than 9000 breeding observations have been submitted, representing the most comprehensive database on local breeding bird status and distribution. 

Marissa DeVille, former Vice President of GCAS, worked for several years as a data entry and project management intern for the BBS. Marissa created an introductory video for the new ArcGIS Online interface for the database which is available on GCAS’s YouTube. More recently, GCAS member Linus Blomqvist has worked with SBAS’s Mark Holmgren to provide data visualization for bird breeding phenology across the county. GCAS plans to hold a volunteer Hackathon to upscale those efforts into a more comprehensive product in the future.