The Great Backyard Bird Count, get into it
eBird and Merlin apps have taken 'backyard' birding to a whole new level
“Ha! Got ya!”
My hot coffee cup melted a circle out of the frost on the back-porch barbecue as I stood there with binoculars to my face, rockin’ that just-out-of-bed Covid-19 coif in my sweatpants an incredibly old t-shirt and ancient wool socks, and I actually exclaimed “got ya!” at the sight of a silly tufted titmouse I’d seen at least three dozen times before.
Ha! Indeed.
When I get into a mode of counting birds a mild competitive spirit arises, not that I’m really competing against anyone, at all, out there on my back porch in my old woolies. Maybe it’s just a matter of fulfilling a selfish satisfaction or (gasp) an addiction? Maybe it’s that I’m adding a bird to a worldwide list and I want folks to know that one bird was actually here—like when you bring someone to your house and don’t want them to leave without seeing a prized possession.
Beats me.
But whatever the motivation it is a bit of fun adding observations to the eBird or FeederWatch apps on my phone to share the information into a useful worldwide database.
Coming up Feb. 12-15—in case you’re looking for something nerdy to do for Valentine’s Day or Presidents’ Day—the Great Backyard Bird Count will bring together thousands of birders across the world to document what birds are in their “backyards.”
I put that backyard in quotes because, unlike the FeederWatch count I wanted that titmouse to populate that is limited to whatever is attracted to my feeding station and birdbaths, the Cornell Lab or Ornithology, National Audubon Society and Birds Canada define loosely define “backyard” for the GBBC (that’s what us cool kids call it).
People can go somewhere in their area to look for birds individually or as a group, in addition to or in instead of sitting at home. They can count for as little as one time for 15 minutes looking out the back window or several times over the count period in any given area, according to the instructions at birdcount.org.
The 2020 effort involved more than 268,000 participants in 194 countries. They documented more than 27 million birds of 6,942 different species. The top 100 Oklahoma participants in February 2020 included folks that completed as many as 21 checklists with 105 total species and some with just two or three checklists with as few as eight or 10 species.
Back in 1998 the GBBC was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display count results in near real time. Participation continues to grow annually. I have to guess that is due in part to more people learning about it but also due to the growing popularity and use of the eBird checklist and Merlin bird identification apps.
For 2020, the GBBC annual summary notes “the winter that wasn’t” with mild temps and little snow that left ducks and geese overwintering farther north than usual. As a waterfowl hunter I definitely remember that.
Even insect eaters like ruby-crowned kinglets and eastern phoebe overwintered in northern areas in what may have been record numbers—including an eastern phoebe that was documented up in Ontario, according to the summary. Even neotropical migrators like indigo buntings stayed to the north.
The digital records allow a look by region or by country or by species. It is all incredibly interesting, and also important as we try to understand birds and the precipitous decline of many species.
I would encourage anyone to download the eBird and Merlin apps to give them a try and give the GBBC a shot.
I have a vague recollection of starting up with eBird about 10 years ago or so and it just didn’t take. My memory of using it isn’t clear, but as I recall it was a little “clunky” and I just wanted to be happy with my field guide and binoculars. But smart phones and the apps have come a long way in 10 years.
This season I downloaded the app prior to the Christmas Bird Count because I expected I would be on my own for much of the day in my vehicle due to Covid precautions. It was handy indeed. It tracked my time, location and distance, and it automatically moved birds I had already counted near the top of the list on my phone so all I had to do to tally more was to touch the screen.
When I was done I just hit “submit” and I had a checklist that noted my time and location number and types of species tallied. It was shared to the eBird database and I could save it and share with others in my group. Pretty slick.
People can still tally birds the old-fashioned way and post their sightings online at birdcount.org, but those apps are the simple and easy way to go. If you’re not sure, learn more about them at Cornell’s ebird.org site.
The GBBC web site posts a visual of real-time submissions each year so people can actually look at a map online and see their own counts turn up as a bright spot on the globe. That also makes it a great learning activity for kids.
One list at a time, one bird at a time, jump on in, sweatpants or none. I swear by my woolies, it’ll get ya hooked.