The Great Backyard Bird Count

Photo: Sally Robertson

The Intro

​One weekend in February changed the way I saw birding, and I owe, in part, my full commitment to birding to The Great Backyard Bird Count. Bold statement? Maybe, but in 2006 I saw a link to a website that appealed to my inner birder. The website said I would be helping out by keeping track of the birds that I saw over four days during a weekend in February and best yet, I would get to call myself a citizen scientist! It felt like I was back in university, fighting the good fight and at the same time, take my birding to a whole new level.  This all led to the world of eBird, but that is for another story. I hope this article will spark a little something in your inner citizen scientist and you join me with over a 140,000 other folks on the four day event held February 12-15.

The Simplicity

​Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to see what birds are in your backyard. Load the feeders on Friday morning, February 12th, curl up with a good field guide some Binoculars and your notebook and see how many types and total birds have come to your feeder in say 15 minutes or so. Yup it’s that simple. Don’t worry too much about missing a chickadee that flew in and out without you counting it, it is the entire count that matters. Don’t forget to count them all, including crows and pigeons, and it counts if you see them fly by outside of your yard too. If you like things really simple, print this handy form to use during your count. You can make as many lists as you like in the four days between Feb 12 and Feb 15. Don’t worry if your birds are sparse as that information is just as important as having a flocks come in and pillage your feeder. If you would like to walk in your local park, keep a count there as well, but enter it as a different location from your yard. For the hard-core birders like me, I will hit every "hotspot" in my area during that weekend including wildlife reserves, national parks, and all around “birdy” areas and end up with around 20 lists for the weekend. If one list over the four days is your speed, that is absolutely perfect too.  

The Entry

​To allow this information to be as useful as possible, it must be collected in a central location so that it can be combined, massaged, crunched, and whatever other verb you want to use to describe the research that happens after.  This entry is simple and can be done in a matter of a couple minutes. Once you have the Great Backyard Bird Count site up and in front of you, the next step is to put in the location. Go to the “Find it on a Map” section and put in your county and state and click your location on the map as close as you can get it.  Next you will want the date, time and a couple other simple clicks to get you to the place where you enter the birds. The birds are in listed taxonomically. That is just a fancy way to say they are listed by family groups. Ducks are found with other ducks and woodpeckers are found with other woodpeckers.  All you have to do from here is put in the number of each of the birds you saw during you birding experience. Try to get a close as you can, but if you have 150 blackbirds in the field next to you, 151 is not going to throw the research into a tailspin.  If you want to get fancy and list how many males and females, there is details button on every species, but it’s not necessary. You can enter your lists for some months after the count, so not to worry if you didn’t get it in on the day that you counted. If you get stuck, drop me a note on the The Bird Blogger website and I will try to help out. 

The Contest

Oh yes, there is a contest, but it is much easier to win if you have a digital camera. Make sure that you have your camera handy during your count as you might just take the winning shot. I know I’m bringing my camera with me. Click here to see the winners from 2015. 

The Good Fight

​Birds are almost always moving. The reasons may be varied but it is rare for a bird to stay in one place for very long.  The idea of this weekend is to take a “snapshot” of as many birds as possible in order to collect information as to where our feathered friends have called home for the winter season. This snapshot of information is run through a multitude of programs to see how many individuals there are of any given species, the total of all species in an area, and countless other reports. More importantly, all of this data for the year is then compared with previous years to find trends which will give clues as to the health of that specific species, all birds and the ecosystem in general. The concept also helps us put together a model of wintering areas which are important to species who are recovering, endangered or at the brink of extinction. The important part of this concept is that the people looking to "fight the good fight" would never be able to gather this much information by themselves.  Thanks to your effort and time, they are able to do the work it would have taken decades to complete in just a single season. 

The Feedback

​One of the cool things about the people at the GBBC and eBird are that they don’t just want to take your information and run. They have put together some very fascinating graphics that show how your information is used in several different applications. Let’s say your favorite bird is the Downy Woodpecker and you are curious about where you could find your favorite bird in other parts of the county, you would look here​ and type in Downy Woodpecker. There is also a very mesmerizing map of the world that shows where each of the checklists are being entered from in real time. I have been mesmerized by this very clever program on many occasions. During the weekend of the Great Backyard Bird Count, the map should be lit up like a Christmas tree. 

2016 GBBC Statistics

Checklists Submitted:    Total Species Observed:   Total Individual Birds Counted: 
              162,052                                  5,689                                        18,637,974
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Statistics last updated on March 2, 2016
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The Finish

​The work as citizen scientists that is happening here is not only welcomed with open arms, but needed to ensure the world around us stays healthy. This allows us to affect change when it’s needed and not after, as is the case in so many places now a days. Who knew that the hobby of bird watching would be so important and yet make so many people happy at the same time? Join myself and the world in this important and enjoyable weekend by looking out your window to see what shows up in your backyard.