Day 44 of 365: Day One of The Great Backyard Bird Count
2015 February 13: Today was the beginning of The Great Backyard Bird Count, an annual event jointly hosted by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. For birders, this is a highly-anticipated weekend!
I enjoy participating because of the flurry of online activity from people reporting their bird sightings to the GBBC website: Each February, over 100,000 individuals (people of all ages, from beginners to expert birders) from 135 countries join together in this citizen-science project to count the birds in their area over a four-day period, and report their counts to eBird. We can explore the data online to find out what birds others are seeing in our area -- or around the world!
My backyard birds were very active today; I was blessed to see near-constant activity at my backyard feeders all day long ...by the time that my bird counts ended for the day, I actually saw 20 different species of birds (which is a rather high number for me).
All day long I intended to quit watching the birds and focus on my housework -- but then I would glance out a window and see all the birds flying around, and would have to watch their antics for a few more minutes. These are a few of the birds that I saw today ...It was fun, and I look forward to seeing more birds tomorrow!
