Warbler Guy, how do I volunteer to learn more about birds? -- and, for example, better know how to ID warblers? (i.e., I find warbler ID a major challenge in my life. Please help me!)

Thanks, Ally...(in Tacoma, WA):

An option you might wish to consider (?):

Find a breeding bird survey to do with a friend that's involved with the development a new or updated breeding bird atlas for a region or state where you live.

For example, there's hundreds of volunteers currently conducting a five-year breeding bird survey in Wisconsin. They just finished the first year of a five-year nesting season monitoring effort.

See: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/endangeredresources/birdatlas.html

Now imagine next spring, 2016.

You've signed on as a co-helper with a birding friend for new atlas or new atlas edition in your area.

Then, imagine, how your warbler sightings and monitoring efforts could result in new confirmation of nest sites, for example.

This kind of scenario is happening in northern Wisconsin. There, the Tennessee Warbler (TNWA), was merely suggested as a "probable" nester in some counties where suitable habitat for this northerly-breeding warbler occurs.

Now, there's a chance for one or more monitors to confirm TNWA as a state breeder.

Cool, no? (More to read below the following graphic.)

So, feel free to scour the web for your own area's atlas effort....or, if you're really savvy, begin your own atlas with the help of several other volunteers*.

{* = It's obviously a major, Herculean effort to coordinate an atlas along with the dozens of volunteers in the field, in addition to the writers and editors of accounts for each species (as well as the ecology of an area that often serves as introductory chapters in an atlas (e.g., The Santa Clara County "Breeding Bird Atlas of Santa Clara County" is amazing with its natural history information for that Bay Area county, and, in many cases, information that is applicable throughout the seven-county SF Bay Area.).

Another notable aspect of the new Wisconsin atlas effort: A state-of-the-art ebird system is excellent for volunteers to record their sightings online.

Here's a summary for a volunteer recruitment flyer related to the WI breeding bird atlas II (that, I surmise, will be published in or around 2020:

Over the course of the next five years, volunteers will observe bird behavior and report data online. Volunteering is easy! Participants sign up to observe birds near their homes, favorite birding spots and atlas priority blocks and report their observations online using a state-of-the-art system developed by eBird.