Great Backyard Bird Count Is This Weekend

By Dottie Evans

Fill those feeders, grab your binoculars, and log onto the Internet, because it’s time to count all those backyard birds you’ve been enjoying out your kitchen window all winter.

Be sure you’ve got a good bird identification book handy, because descriptions such as “that little gray bird with the tuft on top of his head,” simply won’t do. You’ve got to be able to say it’s a tufted titmouse.

And it helps to know the difference between a blue jay and a bluebird, a cardinal and a robin.

The 7th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count takes place over a period of four days, from Friday, February 13, through Monday, February 16, and any homeowner (or at least any person within viewing range of a backyard birdfeeder) who wants to participate is welcome.

Sponsored by Audubon, Wild Birds Unlimited, and Cornell Ornithology Laboratory, the official count takes place across the entire United States and enlists birdwatchers of all ages to become “citizen scientists” as they take local counts and submit their information on the web.

The 2003 Great Backyard Bird Count was a tremendous success, according to information published on the website http://www.birdsource.org. A severe winter snowstorm blanketed New England as birdwatchers in Newtown and surrounding towns kept watch over their feeders and submitted their results in record numbers on the website tally sheets.

When 47,740 tallies had been submitted by residents in towns across the country, a total of 573 species were counted, which amounted to more than four million individual birds. Interesting results from the 2003 count included the fact that numbers of dark-eyed juncos were way up, and the numbers of crows were down, possibly due to West Nile Virus in the Midwest.

Last year, it was the possibility of seeing a Carolina wren at the northern edge of its range that excited birdwatchers.

This year, the experienced hands are hoping for grosbeaks, pine siskins, red crossbills, and purple finches. It is thought that the prolonged, unusually cold winter may have caused these northern species to come further south.

As usual with bird migration patterns, nothing is for sure. Part of the fun is not only counting the regulars but watching out for the occasional visitors –– species we don’t normally see.

Instructions about counting and submitting results are clearly explained on the birdsource.org website. Over the weekend, check the results for Connecticut, in Newtown and in Sandy Hook, which are regularly posted as soon as they are submitted. Find out what your neighbors are seeing at their feeders. The following advice from the website might prove helpful.

“Be careful not to count the same bird over and over! Don’t add another Blue Jay to your tally every time you see a Blue Jay at the feeder. You could be seeing the same individual again and again. If you record only the highest number of individual birds that you see in view at one time, you’re sure to never count the same bird more than once!”

When you’ve spent half an hour or so looking at the feeders, go to the computer and enter your results for that count. You can always do another count later in the same day, or submit separate counts on the following days. An optional site may also be visited to record information about yourself and your bird-watching experience, which will be kept confidential.