A Note on regions

To organize the information on this site, we grouped the 133 counties and independent cities in Virginia into a dozen regions. These regions are our own creation, and differ slightly from the regions used by other projects such as the Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas or Virginia Birds journal. Birding Virginia is intended primarily as a birding resource, so we have tried to create regions based on our understanding of “birder geography” in this state. To the best of our ability, we have attempted to group counties in ways that birders are likely to be familiar with by considering both natural and human geography, as well as how local birding communities are organized. While birders are carefully attuned to physical geography and how it relates to bird distribution and habitat availability, this is not always the only (or even the primary) factor determining how we actually bird. We recognize that the regions are a subjective creation, but hope that they will provide a logical and helpful way to navigate the information on the site.