"Count Something and Make It Count" at your feeders

Hi, Birdsters... It's that time of year again! The Bird Counts are just around the corner and you can help!

I just received this e-mail from the Ohio Ornithological Society encouraging everyone (newbie and oldies) to participate in the record keeping-- E-mail or phone your park district, local Audubon Society or Bird Club for dates and times or feeder watching instructions:

From Tom Bain:

Hi birders,

Please consider the words of Paul Baicich, leading birder and conservationist, spoken during the Ohio Ornithological Society BirdConservation Symposium this past weekend:

"Count something and make it count."

Invest purpose and satisfaction beyond enjoyment into your identification records by investing the moments needed to add them to easy to usedatabases. Contribute to citizen science.

Step one: Find a Christmas Bird Count near you today:

http://www.ohiobirds.org/calendar/winter_counts/overview.php

Counts happen from December 14 to January 5, annually.

Find the National site here: http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc/

Call or Email the coordinator/compiler and offer to help. You have all the fun while the compiler does the data entry for you.

Step two: Log into Ebird http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ and begin entering your own records, beginning with your feeder. It's very simple. Ebird can be your personal database while using your records in combination with manyothers to better understand abundance and distribution of your favoritebirds, and the many new birds you learn to identify as you pursue youravocation.

Step three: Consider participating in organized counts like The GreatBackyard Bird Count http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/ andProject Feederwatch http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/.

Step four: Participate in the OHIO BREEDING BIRD ATLAS II for 2008 beginning very soon http://www.ohiobirds.org/obba2/.

Keep your journal and your lists but make your time count for more than paper. Make your gallons of gas count for more than enjoyable scenery. Do any or all of these steps to help bring science to birding and birding toscience. Your help is needed!

Tom Bain
The Glaciated Allegheny PlateauChair,
OOS Conservation Committee

Sounds like a persuasive argument to participate in community (and national) efforts for bird conservation and we signed up to do our County Park Bird Counts next Saturday and Sunday!

This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 5:42 PM

This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 6:04 PM

What a great idea! I will look into this.

Thanks tabasco!

For February, all you backyard birders can be involved!

http://www.audubon.org/gbbc/index.shtml

We did the Great Backyard Bird Count last year and it was a ball! Each member of our family watched out a different window for a specific period of time...it was a riot... of course, we had bloody mary's while we were doing it...(our kids are over 21) ...made for a fun family 'event'.

Also, the E-bird site is pretty neat for keeping records and helping out the ornithologists with data...easy to use, too.

Thanks for the info. This sounds fun.

I'm just bumping this up to remind everyone again if you would like to take part in this worthwhile project. :-)