Want to be part of a cool project and monitor birds this winter? February is approaching and that means it’s time for the Great Backyard Bird Count. The event happens from February 12 – 15, 2010 and all you need to do is the birds you see in your yard on one or more of the days during Feb 12 – 15. You count can be as short as fifteen minutes or as long as 24 hours–it’s up to you. To make sure you are not counting the same bird again and again, you wouldn’t count every cardinal you see. You’d count the most number of cardinals that you see at one time. So, if watched for three hours and you saw 10 cardinals in a flock all at once and then 45 minutes later you saw 4 more, you wouldn’t say you saw 14, you’d say that you saw 10.
There’s a very helpful video here and written instructions here. It’s super simple and gives us some great data on wintering populations of birds–who knows, maybe you have a weird bird in your yard and it needs to be documented? Now, I’m going to be in Panama during the count–I’ve asked Cornell if I can count it, they are doubtful but they think I should do it anyway just for the bragging rights.
Now, there is also a photo contest for this too. You should enter that as well for some fun prizes. My favorite photo from last year didn’t get first place, but you could tell that this woman had some crazy hungry redpolls coming to her feeders.
Is she adding Coke to her seed?
Lol–I almost thought the same thing, but she’s doing a wonderful job of recycling by using an old pop bottle to store thistle seed. The narrow opening makes it idea for pouring into a tube feeder without too much of a mess.
Wow, those birds are hungry, i can’t even open my deck door without all the birds flying away.
Thanks for the heads-up; sounds like a fun! I’m just starting to get some interesting birds at my feeder; I’m looking forward to seeing what shows up everyone else’s backyards!
As someone fairly new to the feeder game I am still always looking for tips, and could easily have been the gulible one to fall for some creative writing about how the acid in soda cleans the feeder to prevent disease spread – with the seed still in it! Maybe not, but I do admit I checked the comments just to find out why the woman was adding soda to her bird food. For the record I thought it was a bad idea from the start.