The Great Backyard Bird Count Starts Friday, February 13th!

In my last post (http://dansgardening.blogspot.com/2015/02/almost-time-for-great-backyard-bird.html), I described the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) in detail, including a brief background regarding this very important citizen science project, and simple how to instructions.

The count runs from February 13th to the 16th for a total of 4 days.

Below are two of the bird species you may observe this weekend if you live in the Northeast.  For fun, see if you can identify the first bird below.  I took this photo this past weekend.  The mystery bird has been at my feeder quite often this winter, but I just figured out the species since there are other very similar species that frequent my feeders.  The second bird is a dead give away of course.  I will give the answer for the first bird in my next post.

Guess the Species

Blue Jay

The GBBC has become increasingly popular.  To give you an idea as to how many people participate in the GBBC worldwide, below are some statistics from last year's count:

Number of checklists: 144,109
Species observed: 4,296
Countries participating: 135
Estimated number of participants: 142,051
Photos entered in contest: 4,491
Photos posted to gallery: 1,242

So follow the simple steps listed in my last post (see link above).  The counts can be entered online, and there are even printable tally sheets on the GBBC website (http://gbbc.birdcount.org/) based on your geographic region.  For those of you with smart phones, you can use the BirdLog GBBC app to record and submit your bird counts.

This is available for both iPhone and Android and is free.  It is simple to use, you can log in using your existing GBBC/eBird account.

This is also of course a great opportunity to take some bird photos, as there is a photo contest with many great prizes to be won.

So enjoy the bird count, get your family involved and spend some quality time together.

Until next time.