Participate In The Great Backyard Bird Count – February 14-17

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Each February, for four days, people watch and count as many birds as they can find and report them with phone apps or on a website. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.

Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was the first online citizen science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real time. Birds Canada joined the project in 2009 to provide an expanded capacity to support participation in Canada. In 2013, the the Great Backyard Bird Count became a global project when they began entering data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related participatory science (community science or citizen science) project.

Participating is easy, fun to do alone or with others, and can be done anywhere you find birds.

  • Step 1: Decide where you will watch birds.
  • Step 2: Watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 14–17, 2025.
  • Step 3: Identify all the birds you see or hear within your planned time/location and use the best tool for sharing your bird sightings.

If you are a beginning bird admirer and new to bird identification, try using the Merlin Bird ID app to tell the scientists what birds you are seeing or hearing. If you have participated in the count before and want to record numbers of birds, try the eBird Mobile app or enter your bird list on the eBird website (desktop/laptop).

For more details on how to participate, visit the Cornell website at https://www.birdcount.org/participate/

You can start entering bird lists at midnight local time on the first day of the count, anywhere in the world. Data entry remains open until March 1, but the information you enter should only be from the four days of the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Learn more at the video below and at https://www.birdcount.org/

The banner image is a photograph of an Eastern Bluebird taken by John Zoldak in Charlestown.