Pennsylvania's Second Breeding Bird Atlas: 2004-2009

The first full field season for Pennsylvania's 2nd Breeding Bird Atlas Project began in 2004, twenty years after the beginning of the first Atlas. In truth, the 2nd Atlas has been underway since early 2003, when a planning and design team headed by Dr. Tim O'Connell of Penn State's Cooperative Wetlands Center (Dr. O’Connell is now at Oklahoma State University) began its work researching survey protocols. The group developed contracts with The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO) to create a customized web-based data entry and data exploration program, built on the innovative eBird approach system for recording and organizing bird observations electronically. At CLO, Steve Kelling, Paul Allen, Jeff Gerbracht, Roger Slothower, and others have been working very hard to make this new application fit the ambitious goals that the Pennsylvania Atlas team has set forth for the project. These ambitious goals, combined with hard work of the very knowledgeable and skilled Information Technologies Group at CLO, has resulted in the best data internet atlassing application in the world. CLO plans to continually improve on this application as improvements and glitches become apparent throughout the course of the 2nd PBBA, and hopes to make the application available to other states in the near future.

The 2nd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas will be similar to the first Atlas in many respects, and quite different in a few others! The Project's primary sponsor this time is Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, which, under the leadership of Dr. Bill DeWalt, has demonstrated a renewed commitment to the study and preservation of biodiversity in Pennsylvania and around the world. Others from CMNH directly involved in the Atlas project include Dr. David Smith, the new Director of Powdermill Nature Reserve, CMNH's field station in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern PA, Ms. Sylvia Keller, former Deputy Director for Public Programs at CMNH (both Dr. Smith and Ms. Keller serve on the Atlas Advisory Committee), and Mr. Chris Bell, CMNH's Director of Development. CMNH views the 2nd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas as a highly important scientific study, a valuable conservation tool, and an exceptional educational opportunity. It is committed to providing necessary logistical and other support for helping to ensure that the planned five-year Atlas project will meet its scientific, conservation, and educational potential.

The Project Director for the 2nd Atlas is Dan Brauning, now Chief Nongame Ornithologist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Bob Mulvihill, Director of Field Ornithology at Powdermill Nature Reserve of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, serves as Project Coordinator for the 2nd PBBA. Bob was actively involved in the first atlas, serving as a Regional Coordinator and authoring twenty-two species accounts. Assisting Bob is Mike Lanzone, Assistant Field Ornithology Projects Coordinator for Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who brings a wealth of birding knowledge, field ornithology experience, and many other skills to the very big job at hand.

Working out of an office created at Powdermill Nature Reserve especially for the Atlas project, Bob has asked a number of the state's most experienced and dynamic birders to serve as Regional Coordinators. Thankfully, more than a few of the persons whom we can thank for capably taking a leadership role in the first Atlas are still active Pennsylvania birders whose experience with the first Atlas prepares them especially well for taking on this important role once again, some 20 years later. Together, we hope to encourage the rest of the state's many enthusiastic and well skilled birders to take on the task of collecting data on the diversity of birds to be found across the length and breadth of the state.

It is Pennsylvania's birders and birdwatchers, thousands of them, who will actually "do" the Atlas. Additional fieldwork from a small number of paid field assistants (in ’04 and ’05, funded largely through grants to the Atlas from the Wild Resource Conservation Fund) will help ensure that some of the special features of the 2nd Atlas can be completed on a statewide scale.

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