Texas Colonial Waterbird Society Bird Database

Waterbirds are often thought of as good indicators of ecosystem health because they are among top predators, conspicuous, easily enumerated, and often emblematic of wetland conservation. For these reasons, the Texas Colonial Waterbird Society (TCWS) has been collecting data on nesting waterbirds along the Texas coast since 1973.

The goal of these counts is to produce long-term trends of estimated numbers of breeding pairs as a surrogate for breeding populations. These estimates are used by managers and researchers to address population declines. The TCWS is comprised of federal and state agencies, universities, and non-profit organizations who meet annually to plan and conduct the colonial waterbird breeding survey each year. The survey takes place in a two-week window (usually the last two weeks of May, or the last week of May and first week of June) each year. The goal is to count breeding pairs for each species of waterbird on every known coastal colony.

In the past, data from these annual surveys have been housed by the various contributing agencies and organizations; consequently, it has taken many forms. The passing of the database from agency to agency has resulted in inconsistent data availability over time depending on each agency’s ability to store and share the data publicly. Beginning in May 2016, with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the Harte Research Institute (HRI) began addressing the management of the database, transforming it from Microsoft Access into ESRI geodatabase format.