Local birders — from novice to expert — needed

Birders of all skill levels and citizen scientists will be looking out their picture windows to assess bird populations during the Great Backyard Bird Count.

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Published: 02/12/12 12:05 am | Updated: 02/12/12 12:14 pm

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Birders of all skill levels and citizen scientists will be looking out their picture windows to assess bird populations during the Great Backyard Bird Count.

The 15th annual event will take place from Friday-Feb. 20.

Anyone can participate and no registration is needed. Participants are asked to watch and count birds for at least 15 minutes on any day of the count. You are then asked to log in your results at the count’s website.

The four-day count typically records more than 10 million observations providing a snapshot of the whereabouts of more than 600 bird species.

“When thousands of people all tell us what they’re seeing, we can detect patterns in how birds are faring from year to year,” Janis Dickinson, director of Citizen Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in a prepared statement.

The event is hosted by the Audubon Society, the Cornell lab and Canadian partner Bird Studies Canada.

The 2011 count included more than 92,000 bird checklists submitted by participants from across the United States and Canada. Participants identified 596 species with 11.4 million bird observations.

In Washington, the count tallied more than 259,000 birds and 198 different species.

Locally, there were 234 checklists turned in from the Olympia area. In the Tacoma area, there were 251 lists. The local counts included tallies of 81 species in Tacoma, 105 species in Olympia, 48 species at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge and 65 species in Puyallup.

Although called the backyard count, it often extends beyond those confines. Some participants opt to head to national parks, nature centers, urban parks, nature trails or nearby sanctuaries.

LEARN MORE: For information, including bird ID tips and past results, visit birdcount.org/gbbc.

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