A Valentine’s Day For The Birds: Join The Great Backyard Bird Count This Weekend!

Anna Gustafson -
A snowy owl spotted during last year’s count. Photo by Diane McAllister, via the GBBC.

Let this Valentine’s weekend be one for the birds!

From Friday, February 13 through Monday, February 16, you can show some love for Mother Nature by counting your avian friends for the 18th annual Great Backyard Bird Count — a worldwide event that helps scientists track bird changes in countries across the globe.

Anyone is welcome to participate, so get your family together, grab a blanket, and start spotting some birds:

1. Register for the count. If you’ve done this before, you can use your previous username and password – or, if you’re new to this avian fete, you’ll need to create an account (which you can do by going to the same registration site).

2. Pick a spot — any spot — where there are birds. That means you can put on your slippers and take a gander on your own porch – or you can head out to some of the amazing birdwatching spots we have right here in our borough, including Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Green-Wood Cemetery, Plumb Beach, Floyd Bennett Field, and Dead Horse Bay. Do you have another favorite birdwatching spot? Let us know! Comment below or email us at editor@ditmasparkcorner.com.

3. Count every bird you see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the GBBC. You can count birds in as many places — and on as many days that the GBBC runs for — as you’d like. Submit a separate checklist for each new day, for each new location, or for the same location if you counted at a different time of day. Estimate the number of individuals of each species you saw during your count.

4. Enter your results on the GBBC website. Or, you can enter your data by downloading the free GBBC BirdLog app.

Last year, bird watchers from 135 countries participated in the 2014 count, documenting nearly 4,300 species on more than 144,000 bird checklists — which comes out to about 43 percent of all the bird species in the world!

The GBBC is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society with partner Bird Studies Canada. You can learn more about the project here, and you can see some great photos from last year’s count here.