What is PBOT?
PBOT is the acronym for the Painted Bunting Observation Team – a group of volunteer “citizen scientists” who are helping ornithologists learn more about the eastern population of Painted Buntings. As the name implies, PBOT’s goal is to observe, record, and catalogue sightings of this beautiful bird, whose population has been in decline for several decades. PBOT started in the early spring of 2005 as a grassroots project to study Painted Buntings in coastal North Carolina. Dr. Jamie Rotenberg (Asst. Professor, UNC-Wilmington) enlisted the help of the members of Lower Cape Fear Bird Club (Wilmington, NC) to observe and report the number of Painted Buntings at their feeders. From these humble beginnings, PBOT has grown with the help of funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partnerships with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, the SC Department of Natural Resources, the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Georgia, the NC Wildlife Commission and many others (see Partners
