Great Backyard Bird Count Embraces Novices

John Roach
for National Geographic News

April 30, 2004

For four days this past February, approximately a hundred thousand people all over
North America braved the winter chill, stepped outside, tallied the
birds in their backyards, and reported their findings over the Internet
as part of the Great Backyard Bird Count.

The tally, reported last week, shows that the participants turned in 42,509 checklists accounting for 554 species of birds, totaling 4,304,598 individuals.

Thousands of the checklists were turned in by individuals or groups that had never before actively birded. "We get tremendous numbers of comments extolling at length how fun it was to do," said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.

The lab, together with the National Audubon Society, has run the bird count for the past seven years. The goal is to get a snapshot of the abundance and distribution of birds in the coldest months of the year.

Combined with data collected during other times of the year, the information allows conservationists and scientists to keep tabs on the health of North America's bird populations. The more data collected, the better their information, so the scientists are constantly recruiting participants.

Sally Conyne, director of citizen science for the National Audubon Society, said the Great Backyard Bird Count is especially designed with novice birders in mind.

"It's designed to be simple and straightforward for people familiar with the birds in their backyard. … What we encourage people to tell us are the birds they are familiar with, sure of, and able to identify," she said.

Novice Birding

While the next Great Backyard Bird Count is ten months away (February 18 to 21, 2005), now is a fine time for novices to get outside and figure out the source of all those jubilant chirps, tweets, and whistles that fill the spring air.

According to Fitzpatrick, the best way to begin is by perusing several different bird books, getting an idea of how different authors and artists depict the same birds. "There is no such thing as one best bird book, because each has its own strength," Fitzpatrick said.

Conyne suggests putting a bird feeder in the backyard or going to the park to get a sense for what kinds of birds are around. "Most people are amazed when they discover how many birds they are familiar with," she said.

Once a novice is ready to give active birding a shot, Fitzpatrick recommends first going along with an experienced friend who is passionate about the activity, and then going out solo.

"The funnest part is to be totally on your own—just you, bird books, and birds and trying to figure out what that thing is you are looking at," he said. "That is when you really get hooked."

Once hooked, birders can participate in several Internet-based bird-counting activities organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society through the BirdSource Web site. The activities include eBird, the Christmas Bird Count, Project FeederWatch, and of course, the Great Backyard Bird Count.

When participating in projects like the Great Backyard Bird Count, it is important that birders count only the birds they can identify—"next year you'll know more," Coyne said. Also, Coyne said participants should report only the greatest number of species that can be seen at one time, in order to prevent the same bird from being counted twice.

Quality Control

As the BirdSource projects and Internet technologies have evolved over the past seven years, project scientists have built in several controls to prevent the mistakes of novice and expert birders alike from corrupting the data.

Filters built into the reporting programs raise flags when weird species or unusually high numbers are reported, prompting an editor to e-mail the participant and seek clarification.

For example, Conyne said that during the 2003 Great Backyard Bird Count, a woman in New Jersey reported a painted bunting. That species normally winters in southern climes such as Florida and Texas.

"I assumed she misidentified a goldfinch in winter plumage, so I wrote to the woman and she said, 'Oh no, it's an adult male painted bunting,'" Conyne said. The woman sent along a picture of the bird in the snow. It turned out to be one of the rarest finds of the winter.

The filters even help novices distinguish between easily confused birds by providing links to descriptions and images of birds that are commonly misidentified, Conyne said.

Even with all the filters, however, some bad data will get through the system, Fitzpatrick said. But given the volume of the data reported, the bad data will become statistically insignificant.

So with the filters in place, even novices can go outside and count birds in the name of science. "It's a fun thing to do," Fitzpatrick said.