We participated! If you’re a birder, you were probably aware that this past weekend – February 14-17 – was the annual Great Backyard Bird Count sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited and led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society with Birds Canada and other international partners.
Participation was fun and it only required a minimum of 15 minutes on one or more of the four days the count was held. We participated for three of the four days just by watching the birds around our yard. We kept a checklist each day and entered the results into our eBird account.
In our backyard count we saw 20 species over the course of three days. We had our usual visitors – Cardinals, Blue Jays, Tufted Titmouse, Chipping Sparrow, Palm and Pine Warbler, Downey Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, White Ibis, Eastern Bluebird, White-winged Dove and Brown Thrasher. Overhead we could see Osprey and Black Vulture. Nearby there was a tree that Anhinga gathered in for the evening. We don’t normally see Little Blue Heron in our front yard, but we did this weekend. And two surprise visitors were Summer Tanager and a Baltimore Oriole. The Summer Tanager is a first for us and unusual for our Central Florida location this time of year. He was eating from a Winter Seed tube we bought at Wild Birds Unlimited. The Baltimore Oriole stopped by a few years ago and made a visit again this year to eat the flowers from our honeysuckle bush.
If you missed this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count, you could participate in Project Feeder Watch, eBird checklists, or the Christmas Bird Count. Citizen participation is important because it helps scientists study migration, bird diversity and other factors bird populations are facing.
For more information, go to www.gbbc.birdcount.org.
