VOLUNTEER TRAINING: Painted Bunting Monitoring

You can help further our understanding of how Painted Buntings use the edges of the North Inlet marsh as nesting habitat during the breeding season by joining the Painted Bunting Monitoring team. Volunteers will estimate the number of birds by using a point count method that involves 5 minutes of listening for calling male buntings at fixed intervals along a prescribed road route in North Inlet. Surveys will occur mornings starting at 8AM, mid-May through June, and will take approximately 2 hours to complete. Volunteer teams will be assigned days of the week based on availability, so you do not need to be able to survey every day.  The plan is to continue this breeding bird survey of Painted Buntings each year so that changes in numbers can be detected for this species of high concern in South Carolina.

This training session is for those who would like to volunteer for this spring session of monitoring, and will cover Painted Bunting song identification, and the point count methodology.