Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) with partially automated identification is an emerging method for the study of ecological associations, habitat quality, and habitat restoration success. The Trees for Tribs Program in New York’s Hudson Valley presents an excellent opportunity for the pairing of PAM with an active habitat restoration program to assess the ability of acoustically-detected ecological profiles to reflect site quality, vegetation growth, and betweensite contrasts in restoration effectiveness. We placed autonomous recording units at 24 sites in the Hudson Valley and 10 sites in the Finger Lakes during the songbird breeding season. Usable data was obtained from 31 of 34 sites, documenting more than 80 species of breeding birds. While avian diversity was similar across sites of different age and vegetation classes, detection rates for assemblages of riparian forest specialists and ground-nesting birds revealed significant effects of restoration on bird communities once plantings have matured to early-seral riparian forest. Data strongly suggest that the development of plantings enhances habitat for forest specialists, but results were somewhat variable even across sites of the same age class. Higher data volumes and integration of non-bird taxa will help to solidify the trends revealed here and identify which site characteristics may influence success across mature sites.