Counting Habits

It really isn’t that difficult. Last weekend was the Great Backyard Bird Count: I ended up doing three counts on three successive days, nothing fancy, just a set of 15 minute stationary point counts. The GBBC is a citizen science bird monitoring effort that takes place in the middle of February. I also logged my point data into eBird, which is in some ways GBBC’s bigger brother — the site hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provides an easy way for birders to submit their observations to be part of the readily accessible ornithological record.

I have made very little use of eBird in the past. The most challenging thing though was finding my old password to the site; it’s quite easy to enter data. This morning I did another point count here at the house, seeing 8 species and 25 different birds. This could become a Saturday morning habit — being out in the garden, counting the birds.