Great Backyard Bird Count (February 13 to 16)
From February 13 to 16, birdwatchers across Canada and around the world will participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, the world’s largest community science event. People can participate by spending just 15 minutes observing and recording the birds they see from anywhere—a kitchen window, local park, or favourite trail.
The count coincides perfectly with Family Day weekend (February 16), making it an ideal free, educational activity for families. Every sighting contributes to critical data that helps scientists track bird populations, migration patterns, and ecosystem health.
Why Count Birds?
Welcome to the world of citizen science! By taking your birding hobby to the next level through collecting, sharing, and contributing data to monitoring and collection programs, you provide an important service to conservation efforts. This, in turn, helps your local birds.
Counting birds is one of many ways birders can help on the citizen science front, but being able to count birds does require some knowledge and some practice. There are many different bird counting events that happen throughout the year, such as eBird’s Global Big Day, the Great Backyard Bird Count, or the Christmas Bird Count that happens in local communities all over North America.
How Do I Help?
If you’re truly a beginner, the best first step may be to find some local, experienced birders who are willing to have you tag along. Shadowing fellow birders is a great way to pick up on the basics of bird counting.
Counting birds can definitely be an intimidating aspect of birding for beginner (and even intermediate!) birders, but it doesn’t have to be! We’ve written some great starting points to help you start counting birds on your own.
What Does Counting Birds Involve?
Your goal is to count as many birds as you can identify and keep track of them. You’re looking to record their species name and the number of individuals. Whether you’re counting for yourself or as part of a group for a specific counting event will decide where you should be submitting your data. Some events require creating an account and logging your data on eBird or submitting it to your counting group.
How Do I Start Counting Birds?
See a bird and know what it is? Write it down! For the times where you don’t know, like when you see what looks like some sort of gull, but you aren’t quite sure which specific species, take note of what you see. Using a notebook, your phone, taking a photo, or even through the Merlin app, gather as much identifying information as you can. The size, colour, habitat, activity, notes about what you think their call sounded like (or even a recording!), can all be used to identify a bird after your excursion. Once you become more familiar and quicker with identifying birds, you can plug your entries right into eBird, or make a quick list to upload later.
For the times you really can’t be sure of the species, there’s a way to document that when reporting: “Sp.” For example, you might see a dozen gulls flying in the distance and can’t possibly tell which species they are, so you’d log “12 gull sp.”
Additional sources: BirdCount.org
Photo credit: Amanda Frank