The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is happening on the weekend of February 13 – 16. Birders from around the world are asked to participate in this fun, free, and easy citizen science project, which originally began with a focus on North America. No special sign-up or registration is required for the GBBC. It is held under the auspices of Birds Canada, Audubon, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The data collected helps ornithologists see how birds are reacting to climate change, habitat loss, urbanization, and the pollutants in our world. This gives them information to act to help birds cope with our changing world.
Check out the birds in your yard or favourite birding spot. Watch for as little as 15 minutes, record the species and numbers, then submit this information to eBird.
Go to www.birdcount.org to look for community events or to promote your own. Watch as checklists are submitted and appear on the bird sightings map. Share your photographs and sound recordings.
Birding and helping birds brings people together. In the 2025 GBBC, 838,113 estimated global participants found 8,078 species of the world’s known birds. There were 217 countries involved, with 387,652 checklists submitted.
I will be visiting some of my favourite spots in SW Florida on that weekend. I hope all of you get out there, too. Let’s do it for the birds!
Note: Picture at the top of the article is by Dara Miles Wilson, posted to Wikipedia Commons, an online source of copyright-free photos.
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