By Mara Evans
Every February since 1998, participants around the world record bird sightings from their backyard over a four-day period, providing conservationists and scientists with invaluable insight into species trends. This event, called the Great Backyard Bird Count, tracks bird populations across the United States and beyond.
This year’s count takes place February 13-16, and you can be a part of it!
Members of local birding group Wake Audubon were kind enough to speak with me about this impressive citizen science effort.
“The Great Backyard Bird Count meets you where you are,” Wake Audubon Communications Chair Megan Damico told me. “You can tally on eBird, you can use Merlin, you can use the Audubon app, and all of that data aggregates together to support science.”
Indeed, out of the many counts that Wake Audubon members participate in throughout the year, this is probably the most accessible of them all. It’s in the name: The focus on backyard birds means travel is totally optional in order to get involved, and because residential areas aren’t usually covered during other counts, the data that is gathered fills an important niche! You can choose to count for as little as fifteen minutes or as long as you want, making this count especially flexible for those with busy schedules. It’s simple, and anyone who uploads at least one bird sighting during the event’s timeframe can proudly say that they contributed to science.
The Great Backyard Bird Count isn’t just accessible in those ways, either. The count, which is organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology partnered with the National Audubon Society, was the very first to publish data online in nearly real-time, meaning anyone interested can view the survey data as it’s uploaded. This immediate display of the impact that individuals are creating puts the entire effort into perspective. The scale of data collection possible with such an accessible approach is achievable thanks to the efforts of the local communities who band together for this event, like Wake Audubon. Speaking of scale — last year, this count received reported sightings of more than two-thirds of all known bird species worldwide, a staggering figure.
Brian O’Shea, a compiler for the Christmas Bird Count, offered his perspective on the Great Backyard Bird Count as well. “There are a variety of motivations for people participating,” he said. “Sometimes, birders want to find other birders. Sometimes, people are new to the area and just want to meet people. Sometimes, it’s a family tradition.” He sees plenty of first-timers every year when he organizes a group for the Christmas count, and he makes sure to connect them with experienced members who can guide them through counting. The important thing, he made sure to tell me, is to “count what you can.” Nobody is perfect at identification, and doing your best is what matters.
John Conners, a long-time participant in bird counts and an active Wake Audubon volunteer, has lots of stories about counting birds, especially where population trends are concerned. He recalled the impact of landfills that opened in the 1970s and 1980s within the area where his group would go to count birds, which happened to be close to lakes that were the perfect habitat for certain species. “We had these flocks of gulls, particularly ring-billed gulls, which breed in the Great Lakes and migrate down the river systems, eventually making their way eastward to the coast,” he explained. “Well, once the landfills opened, there was a smorgasbord of food just waiting for these birds. Every day they would fly out and feed, and then spend the night at nearby lakes. Suddenly, they weren’t making it all the way to the coast anymore!” For years, his group counted tens of thousands of gulls. Once the landfills disappeared, closing sometime in the 1990s, the gulls disappeared, too. “It doesn’t mean the gull population has decreased, it just means that they’re not using our area the way they used to,” he clarified. He said it was fascinating to watch them come and go, and since then he’s never seen anywhere close to the number of gulls he was sighting during the period when the landfills were active. This is precisely the kind of insight that bird counts are able to provide by collecting data year after year.
Conners also observed the rise and fall of other species over the years, like the population boom of waterfowl from feeding on an invasive and fast-growing aquatic weed called hydrilla. Local agencies began to combat the overgrown vegetation by stocking grass carp in the lakes. Grass carp ate just about anything edible, not only hydrilla, and the waterfowl population crashed. Efforts to control the weed in waterways continue today, and Conners notes that the population of waterfowl in the area never fully recovered. Again, he points out that this doesn’t mean ducks disappeared nationally — we know they didn’t, thanks to the annual counts — but some species haven’t been so lucky, like those that favor farmland and have seen a widespread decline due to urbanization and certain agricultural practices.
In addition to bird counts, Wake Audubon also organizes projects to address species decline. Members remove invasive vegetation, plant native species, and pick up litter, among other efforts. Conners led a habitat improvement walk for American woodcocks in early December, working to maintain courtship plots for the species, and this February the participants from that event as well as anyone else interested will revisit the area to observe the happy woodcock couples. Conners emphasized that witnessing the way the birds respond to the volunteer work is incredibly rewarding, calling it “the next level of commitment to the environment.”
For those looking to pick up birding, Conners says feeder-watching, like the backyard count encourages, is a gateway to involvement. He and Damico agree that it’s also the beginning of involvement with nature as a whole. “There’s no better organism on the planet Earth for getting people involved in nature than birds,” Conners said. “Birding is the door that opens people to the natural world.”
“It’s a way to be out in nature,” Damico concurred. “It’s meditative, and it’s movement. It demands your focus instead of your phone.”
Conners said he’s always looking for things that make him feel optimistic, and birds often provide that. For him, birdwatching can be a way to measure the continuing seasons, like a ritual that reminds him the world is doing okay. “I remember seeing my first white-throated sparrow last fall. It’s the same bird from the spring, and it’s already anticipating me feeding it! I know it’s the exact same bird, because we band them. It will fly a thousand miles and then it will come back to my yard again, because it had a successful year here last year.” I could hear the wonder in his voice as he remembered his feathered visitor. “You mark these things, and it gives you peace of mind,” he continued. “If you don’t know what a white-throated sparrow is, you can’t celebrate it! But once you start learning who they are, you can’t help but feel more connected to the world.”
In addition to the Great Backyard Bird Count, Wake Audubon has a beginner birding program that holds workshops for visual identification, birding by ear, and many other tricks of the trade. Wake Audubon serves Wake County and neighboring areas, including Johnston, Franklin, and Nash Counties. Learn more about them at wakeaudubon.org. Carolina Bird Club is another resource recommended by the birders I talked to, and this organization not only serves as a central source of information for annual bird count events but also hosts meetings and field trips. The birding apps mentioned in this article are eBird, Merlin Bird ID, and Audubon Bird Guide, and they can all be downloaded for free from your phone’s app store.
Now go mark your calendar for February 13-16 and join in the Great Backyard Bird Count! For more information, visit birdcount.org.
