Ready for the Great Backyard Bird Count?
This weekend (Feb.16-19), bird enthusiasts from all over the world will participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), a citizen-science project helping track bird population data to allow scientists to see changes from year to year.
The St. Francis Valley Naturalists’ Club has put out the call to Townshippers who give a hoot about birds to get involved and join the worldwide count.
While participating requires the ability to distinguish between different bird species, club member Brian Talbot said the count is a great opportunity for beginners to learn about the birds in their neighbourhood.
Talbot and his wife Sheila Maclean have been participating for the last three years. They are usually out of town during the count, but they log in and record the birds they see during their travels.
The Naturalists’ Club participates in the annual Christmas Bird Count. Talbot explained that the Christmas count is very specific. The members work in teams and pay close attention to a specific area.
“This (GBBC) is citizen-science, kids can do it,” Talbot said.
“In winter, there are only around 1012 species you are likely to see around here,” commented Talbot. “Everybody has a camera on their phone these days,” he said, suggesting people could grab a picture of birds in their area, confirm the species on a birding website or internet image search, and once they can tell the difference, start the count.
Even people who aren’t avid birdwatchers become interested when they start noticing different behaviour and patterns, Talbot said.
Talbot explained that as he watched the bird feeders by his house, he noticed that blue jays tend to visit in the morning, while cardinals prefer to stop by more often in the evenings. “Crows come anytime,” he said. The American goldfinches that normally hang around are scarce these days, Talbot added, saying there is a hawk hiding in a nearby tree keeping them at bay.
“A cooper’s hawk will take a bird right from a feeder,” he said.
In 1998, during the first GBBC, bird watchers submitted about 13,500 checklists from the United States and Canada. During the 2017 count, an estimated 240,418 bird watchers from more than 100 countries submitted 181,606 bird checklists, reporting 6,259 species–more than half the known bird species in the world.
The count requires monitoring an area for a minimum of 15 minutes and uploading the information gathered to the website. Over the four days of the count, people are welcome to submit multiple counts from different areas; their backyard, a balcony, a nearby park.
The instructions on how to participate are available on the GBBC website at http://gbbc.birdcount.org.
If anyone in the area would like to take their bird watching to the next level, Maclean said the St. Francis Valley Naturalists’ Club hosts bird walks with experienced birders. They will start up in May. Talbot pointed out the walks are low impact and more about the birds than the exercise so open to all fitness levels.
In the meantime, Maclean added that the club has organized a talk with guest speaker Dr. Marc Bélisle from the University of Sherbrooke. During the presentation, Bélisle will discuss the impact of agricultural land use, prey availability and contamination by pesticides on the life of tree swallows. The talk is open to the public, and will take place on Wednesday, Feb.28, 7 p.m. at Amédée Beaudoin Community Centre in Lennoxville. Details are available on the St. Francis Valley Naturalists’ Club.