Processed data for the analysis of human mobility changes from COVID-19 lockdown on bird occupancy in North Carolina, USA

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown worldwide provided a unique research opportunity for ecologists to investigate the human-wildlife relationship under abrupt changes in human mobility, also known as Anthropause. Here we chose 15 common non-migratory bird species with different levels of synanthrope and we aimed to compare how human mobility changes could influence the occupancy of fully synanthropic species such as House Sparrow (<em>Passer domesticus</em>) versus casual to tangential synanthropic species such as White-breasted Nuthatch (<em>Sitta carolinensis</em>). We extracted data from the eBird citizen science project during three study periods in the spring and summer of 2020 when human mobility changed unevenly across different counties in North Carolina. We used the COVID-19 Community Mobility reports from Google to examine how community mobility changes towards workplaces, an indicator of overall human movements at the county level, could influence bird occupancy.</p>