The Great Backyard Bird Count

Why not participate? I'm out and about almost daily anyway - on the trails, in the neighborhoods, in the forest, by the ponds, on the beach - and the birds are flitting, flying, wading, waddling and playing all around me. The eleventh annual Great Backyard Bird Count, hosted by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was between February 15th and 18th.

User friendly resources available on their website at http://www.birdcount.org/ made it very easy to tally my bird counts and identify the different species of birds that I saw. My bird counts were made over a two and a half hour period during two walks - one walk on the Railroad Trail and the other along the Taylor Dock Trail. My results were submitted online this morning and added to their tally.

Following are photos from the online database for bird identification available through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website of the specific birds I identified during my counting period.

After submitting my results, almost immediately I receved an email thanking me for my participation and summarizing the results I had submitted. I also viewed the map of Washington State available on their website that shows the areas of reported participation in the Great Backyard Bird Count for 2008.

Even a certificate for participating is provided.

Because I am surrounded by nature daily, I also signed up to participate in their ongoing eBird Program ( http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/eBird ). This program, also a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, is a free, real-time online checklist that will allow me to continue to store and share my bird observations by entering when, what, where and how many birds I observe. This should help me to improve my bird identification and observation skills.

What fun!