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Important Bird Areas

Highlands Project

Summer 2010 will be the second field season of the highlands project, which is a joint project of Audubon, Yale University, UConn, the Connecticut DEP and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Following the same protocol as last season, Audubon will be sending interns out to two new watersheds in the northwest corner of the state to inventory breeding birds. These data will be used to create maps of the area’s breeding birds, which after next season will span four watersheds in Litchfield County, the Shepaug River, the Bantam River, the West Branch of Salmon Brook, and Leadmine Brook.

These projects will give Audubon scientists up-to-date information on the distribution and abundance of birds of conservation concern in three regions of the state, giving us the knowledge we need to proactively protect important bird habitat in these areas before it’s lost to development.

If you are interested in volunteering for this effort, please contact Chris Field via email.

A preliminary map showing the predicted distribution of Black-throated Blue Warbler (Dendroica caerulescens) in the Shepaug (left) and Bantam (right) watersheds of Northwestern CT. These predictions were based on data collected during the 2009 field season.