Audubon North Carolina

06/03/2026

We’re here! Audubon North Carolina members are at the NCGA meeting with lawmakers for Advocacy Day to speak up for birds and our greatest tool to preserve North Carolina’s natural and cultural heritage: the state’s conservation trust funds.

06/02/2026

Please join us in welcoming Katie Roberts and Jacob Gianopulos to the North Carolina flock!

Katie and Jacob started about two weeks ago and are busy surveying known sites for Golden-winged Warblers in western North Carolina.

During their first week they joined Clifton Avery of the NC Wildlife Resources Commission (pictured right), where they surveyed for Golden-winged Warblers on land owned and stewarded by Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.

Jacob (pictured second from the left) is a biology major at App. State. Last summer, he served as a seasonal intern for Audubon South Carolina, where he assisted with banding operations, MOTUS tower repairs, and working the visitor center at Francis Beidler Forest. Jacob is native to the Winston-Salem area and an avid outdoors lover.

Katie (pictured left) brings a depth and diversity of hands-on field experience. Her graduate thesis research involved extensive herpetofauna surveys in central Florida, where she worked in extreme heat and challenging field conditions while collecting morphological measurements, photographic data, blood samples, and chemical samples. Katie is native to western NC and loves to travel across the world.

We’re extremely grateful to have them joining our team this summer!

From left: Katie, Jacob, Conservation Director John DeLuca, and Clifton. 📸: Clifton Avery/NCWRC

06/01/2026

Thank you for counting breeding birds across the state!

With the five-year effort to count North Carolina’s overwintering and breeding birds coming to an end, researchers are now going through the data to see what it can tell us about the birds that call our state home.

Volunteers made 4.7 million observations of birds carrying nesting material, sitting on eggs, feeding chicks, and more. All to help map where and what birds call our state home for the .

See what’s next for this monumental effort: https://www.audubon.org/north-carolina/news/volunteers-made-47m-observations-north-carolina-bird-atlas-now-what

Prothonotary Warbler, adult male and chicks. 📸: Peter Brannon/Audubon Photography Awards

05/29/2026

This is what a bird island on the Lower Cape Fear River looks like right now!

Thousands of Royal and Sandwich Terns are sitting on eggs on Ferry Slip Island in the Lower Cape Fear River. You can see how they organize themselves for nesting in this photo: closely packed with their eggs on the open bare sand.

Our coastal team will be traveling to all of our managed sanctuaries and sites along the river to count nests for the triennial colonial waterbird census. The census is part of a statewide effort to track group nesting birds like terns.

Stay tuned for more details and results from the census.

Royal and Sandwich Terns. 📸: Lindsay Addison/Audubon

05/27/2026

This spring our Pine Island Sanctuary on the Outer Banks welcomed back nesting Osprey, Purple Martins, Prothonotary Warblers, and more.

We installed special recording devices to detect secretive marsh birds hidden among the grasses of the Currituck Sound.

We even hosted a special lunch that honored the natural and cultural heritage of the region.

Get the full recap of the year so far: https://www.audubon.org/north-carolina/news/new-technology-brings-bird-monitoring-next-level-pine-island

05/22/2026

Happy Memorial Day weekend! If you’re on the coast, remember to share the shore with beach nesting birds.

Boaters and beachgoers, unaware that birds are nesting at these sites, may get too close, flushing parents from their eggs and chicks.

Without the protection of their parents, well-camouflaged chicks and eggs can be crushed underfoot, overheat in the sun without shade from their parents, or succumb to opportunistic predators like crows and gulls.

So, make sure to keep a safe distance from birds foraging in the sand and postings along the shore.

5th grader sanctuary closure sign with a Common Tern on the south end of Wrightsville Beach. 📸: Renee Sauer

05/22/2026

A new installment of Naturally Curious with Conservation Director John DeLuca is out now!

This article, which is published by Mountain Xpress is called “The sweet whistle of the Louisiana Waterthrush.”

Louisianna Waterthrush are back in North Carolina for the breeding season and can be found along forested streams in the mountains and piedmont.

“Waterthrushes need lots of mature trees in the canopy along streams. These mature trees have root systems that stabilize stream banks, which help prevent erosion. Without them, stream channels can get wider and deeper.

Indeed, the more waterthrushes that you hear, the better that stream is for our drinking water, as well as our success and fun while out fishing, and our safety during the next big storm. So, if you hear a lot of waterthrushes when you’re walking in a nearby forested stream, raise your water bottle and make a toast to our health, people and birds alike.”

Keep reading to learn how you can help conserve habitat for this bird: https://mountainx.com/news/environment/naturally-curious-with-john-deluca-the-sweet-whistle-of-the-louisiana-waterthrush/

Louisianna Waterthrush. 📸: Jesse Gordon/Audubon Photography Awards

05/21/2026

Act Now! Use this form to ask your lawmaker to support North Carolina's Conservation Trust Funds: https://act.audubon.org/a/act-now-urge-lawmakers-support-conservation-funding-state-budget

We want to keep working lands working for farm families and birds. That’s why we’re advocating for increases to the NC Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund. When family landowners are able to keep their forests and farms prospering, we can keep essential bird habitat intact and our communities healthy for generations to come.

The NC Land and Water Fund alone has helped protect over 300,000 acres of important bird habitat across the state. This represents two-thirds of the land protected by the trust funds.

Places like Grandfather Mountain and Jockey’s Ridge State Park wouldn’t exist without the NC Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. Parks where Bald Eagles, Prothonotary Warblers, Osprey, and more nest every year.

That’s why we are advocating for increases to all three trust funds in this year’s budget:

NC Land and Water Fund
NC Parks and Recreation Trust Fund
NC Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund

05/20/2026

Make sure to sign our petition to Raleigh City Council! https://act.audubon.org/a/thank-your-council-members-supporting-trees-and-birds

Raleigh lost more than 1,300 acres of tree canopy between 2010 and 2020. A new initiative to plant 24,000 trees is one step toward reversing that trend.

For birds like the Wood Thrush, healthy urban and suburban forest cover is not optional. Populations have already declined 50 percent over the last four decades, driven by the loss of healthy breeding forest across North America. Without enough trees, species like the Wood Thrush stop showing up in our neighborhoods at all.

Trees also keep temperatures down, clean the air and water, and reduce flooding. Show your support and thank Raleigh council members for backing this initiative: https://act.audubon.org/a/thank-your-council-members-supporting-trees-and-birds

Photo Credits: Megumi Aita/Audubon Photography Awards

Audubon North Carolina
Trees for the Triangle
We Plant It Forward