Volunteer Opportunity with the Concrete Chorus

Help contribute to a study on where birds thrive in Colorado — and why

As cities grow, we still know surprisingly little about how birds are distributed across urban neighborhoods — and which factors best support them. This gap limits our ability to conserve birds in the places where more and more people (and birds) now live.

The Concrete Chorus Project is a community science initiative led by researchers at Colorado State University investigating how factors such as housing density, proximity to green space, and tree canopy cover shape bird diversity in cities. We are also interested in the so-called “luxury effect,” the pattern in which higher-income neighborhoods often (though not always) support greater biodiversity. Understanding these patterns can help inform both urban bird conservation and strategies for supporting equitable access to nature in cities.

After successfully piloting the project last year in North Carolina, we’re excited to expand data collection in Colorado this spring.

We’re looking for volunteers to help by making short recordings of morning birdsong using their smartphones. You don’t need to identify birds yourself — simply visit an assigned site four times in May and June, make a three-minute recording using the Merlin Bird ID app, and send the recording to us.

That’s just 12 minutes of recording total, but these recordings generate valuable data to better understand how birds use our city and how we can design more bird-friendly urban spaces.

To learn more, visit our website here: https://www.concretechorus.org/ 

If you’re interested in participating this spring, please fill out a brief interest form: Fort Collins version, Denver version