February 11, 2009

Calling all birders: Great Backyard Bird Count Feb. 13-16, 2009

Posted in Animals, Birds at 3:23 pm by dpesek

If you have any interest in birds, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society want your help counting birds this weekend.

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count takes place from Feb. 13-16, 2009.

Rules are simple: Count birds for 15 consecutive minutes on any one (or two, or three, or all four) of these dates. Then enter your sightings online here (this page will be active for entering information once the count begins). 

You can count birds for longer than 15 minutes, but count for a minimum of 15 minutes.

Location doesn’t matter. It can be your backyard bird feeder. You can go to a local park or wildlife refuge and count the birds there. Is there waterfowl on a nearby lake? The GBBC wants to know.

The results of the bird-counting help Cornell and Audubon track trends in bird numbers and trends in bird locations. You become a citizen-scientist for these organizations. Your data helps provide a picture of the bird population across the continent.

This is a great event for educators, and the GBBC website has special information just for you at this link.

And here’s a game called Eagle Eyes to help children learn to hone their observation skills.

Once the results are entered, it’s fun to see what the trends for your area are. For example, in 2008 for Cedar Rapids, Iowa, these were the top 5 birds reported (by numbers of birds):
Mallard — 1841
Canada Goose — 559
Mourning Dove — 339
House Finch — 188
Dark-eyed Junco — 175

For Iowa overall, these were the top 5 birds reported (by number of birds):
Dark-eyed Junco — 8334
House Sparrow — 6236
Canada Goose — 4850
American Goldfinch (Iowa’s state bird) — 4394
Northern Cardinal — 3915

And for the US, these were the top 5:
Snow Goose — 927,059
Canada Goose — 778,867
European Starling — 767,754
American Robin — 534,560
Common Grackle — 509,020

These figures were all taken from the GBBC website. Go here to explore the numbers and birds that interest you.

The GBBC website has all the information you need to participate in the count. Have fun!

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