What's so great about the Great Backyard Bird Count?

Season 3 of the Warblers Podcast launches today with an episode about the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). Andrea connects with experts from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Audubon Society, and our own Kerrie Wilcox, who all work together to organize the GBBC in Canada and the US. They talk program history, the evolution of birding and technology, and the importance of having engaging entry-level bird monitoring opportunities for people.
 
 Spoilers...you don't need a backyard to get involved. Join the Great Backyard Bird Count.
 
The Warblers is brought to you by Birds Canada a non-profit, charitable organization. Please make a donation today to support the podcast and bird conservation work in Canada.  
 
Kerrie Wilcox manages the Great Backyard Bird Count in Canada and Project FeederWatch, a program that turns people’s bird feeding hobby into research for conservation.  She loves feeling the enthusiasm and commitment of the volunteers and seeing how much we've learned from their contributions.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish is the project leader for the Great Backyard Bird Count with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Becca also works as the project leader for Nest Quest Go!, a crowd-sourced project where citizen scientists help transcribe historic nest records.

Kathy Dale is the Director of Science Technology and Community Science Team Lead at the National Audubon Society. She leads the delivery of programs such as the Great Backyard Bird Count and the Christmas Bird Count.

Andrea Gress studied Renewable Resource Management at the University of Saskatchewan. She pivoted towards birds, after an internship in South Africa. Upon returning, she worked with Piping Plovers in Saskatchewan and now coordinates the Ontario Piping Plover Conservation Program for Birds Canada. Follow her work at @ontarioplovers

Transcript

What's so great about the Great Backyard Bird Count?
January 24, 2023

SPEAKERS

Kathy Dale, Becca Rodomsky-Bish, Kerrie Wilcox, Andrea Gress

Andrea Gress  00:08

You're listening to the Warblers, a Birds Canada Podcast. I'm Andrea Gress. Join me and others as we travel on common flight paths with our guests gaining insights and inspiration from the world of birds and bird conservation in Canada. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Warblers. It's getting kind of chilly outside for many of us, especially if you're tuning in when this episode is being released. We're in the thick of winter, you might be settled into watching your feeder for entertainment. Certainly nothing wrong with that. Personally, I never tire of the chickadees and the juncos that kind of follow me along the winter trails. They're always putting on such tough faces in such small little bodies. If you're looking to get involved in a new project this winter or perhaps this one's already a family favorite of yours. Today's episode is all about the Great Backyard Bird Count, the GBBC, as we sometimes shorten it to, takes place each year in February, and it's one of the most accessible and family friendly bird watching events you can participate in from anywhere in the world. Today we have Becca Rodomski-Bish, Kathy Dale, and Kerrie Wilcox, joining us three absolute powerhouses in the bird world, all deeply involved in the Great Backyard Bird Bount. Welcome to the podcast.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  01:29

Hi. Thanks for having us.

Andrea Gress  01:33

So I'd like to start by having each of you just introduce yourselves to our listeners. Let us know your title, where you're calling in from Kathy, can we start with you?

Kathy Dale  01:43

Sure. I'm Kathy Dale. I'm the Director of Science Technology and Community Science team lead for Audubon. I'm located in the extreme southeast corner of Pennsylvania down near Delaware and Maryland. 

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  01:56

And I'm Becca Rodomski-Bish. I'm the project leader for the Great Backyard Bird Count at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And I'm actually calling in from just outside of Ithaca, New York today.

Kerrie Wilcox  02:09

And hi, everyone. I'm Kerrie Wilcox, and I'm the Canadian leader of Feederwatch. And the Great Backyard Bird Count here at Birds Canada. And my role usually involves connecting people to, to nature through birds. And it's awesome to see people's birdwatching hobby turned into research for conservation. And I'm located at Long Point, Ontario.

Andrea Gress  02:29

Awesome. And listeners might recognize Kerrie's voice from a previous episode "Feeding Birds the Right Way" where she just dives into, you know what it sounds like all the all the pointers and tips to feeding birds in your backyard. So it's awesome to have you back, Kerrie and great to have Kathy and Becca joining as well. So before we get too far into the topic of the Great Backyard Bird Count, I want to start with like my number one question about this project. Becca, is a backyard required to participate?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  03:00

Absolutely not. The name is quite deceiving. But no, you do not need a backyard to participate. That term sort of emerged from kind of historical context. And basically, wherever there are birds you can participate, which is essentially everywhere on the planet. So wherever there are birds, we want to know about them. And we want to hear from you about the ones that you're seeing.

Andrea Gress  03:26

That's great. Could you tell me like a bit more? Let's get into it. What what is the Great Backyard Bird Count?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  03:32

Sure. Yeah, it's it's a really fun four day event in February. For anybody that really loves birds and nature and wants to share what they're seeing or hearing with people, both in their community and then the greater world. Everyone, all ages are encouraged to participate. We have a lot of families that do this, classrooms, beginning birders who are just kind of curious, as well as expert birders who you know, travel across the world to see new and different birds. So every level is welcome and invited. February is often a strange one, right? People say why are we watching birds in February, especially if you're in the northern hemisphere. And it can seem a little strange. But what's really great about February is that it's a moment in time right for birds engaged in one of their annual migrations if they are migrating birds. So it gives us a really clear snapshot of where birds are before they are once again on the move for the year. So anybody can participate any time of year and February actually is a great time for us to be taking notes on what birds are where.

Andrea Gress  04:34

Cool. It's like we're doing a little census while they're still in their their home spots for the winter. And then they'll take off and we'll keep counting them all the way through. Sweet. And what what role does your organization play?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  04:47

Yeah, so the It's really wonderful. I I'm not going to speak for Kerrie and Kathy but it's so great to work with three real powerhouse conservation bird conservation organizations, and I am just one so I'm coming from the Lab of Ornithology. And we all work very closely together on this project. And I think we're blessed to all bring our different audiences and passions to it. The Lab's main role is that the data collection tools are Lab-run tools. So there's two ways people can enter their data for the Great Backyard Bird Count. They can use Merlin, which is a really fun phone free phone app, that super easy to use, you can take a picture of a bird, and it'll ID it for you. You can record sound and it'll ID it for you. You can answer three basic questions and it'll help ID it for you. So the tools, and then eBird is the other tool where you can submit checklists of multiple birds. And those are two tools that are managed by the Lab. So we're kind of the tool heavy part of this conservation effort.

Andrea Gress  05:48

Bringing the toolbox to it. That's awesome. And Kerrie, could you tell us how Birds Canada is involved?

Kerrie Wilcox  05:55

So Birds Canada's role is to recruit people across Canada to give us a snapshot of the birds in their own backyard or in their favorite birding spot, because scientists can't be everywhere. So it's all of our jobs to help. So data collected from the GBBC and combined with other citizen science projects like Christmas Bird Count and Project FeederWatch gives us a great picture of how our birds are doing, and which ones need our conservation attention. So the GBBC is now over 25 years old. So this is a fantastic long term data set.

Andrea Gress  06:32

Yeah, it tells us a lot about what our birds are doing at this time of year. Really cool. And finally, Kathy, how does Audubon fit in with all of this?

Kathy Dale  06:41

So Audubon brings over 450 chapters across the United States. And our chapters are very active in mentoring their communities to learn about bird identification, teach kids about the natural world, and how important birds are to the health of our environment. And the Great Backyard Bird Count is a program our chapters have been involved in since the beginning. And it's a great way to engage local communities with a variety of birding skills from beginner to expert.

Andrea Gress  07:09

Awesome. So, so exciting to have. Yeah, like, like we've all been saying the three powerhouse organizations running this project together. I think, I think we're all that much stronger. When we've got everyone working together. We're gonna learn so much more about the birds have so many more people involved. It's really exciting. Kathy, could you tell me a little bit more about the history of the GBBC? You know, how did it all get started? And I'm also curious about that word backyard. Why is that part of the title?

Kathy Dale  07:39

Yeah, sure. So, it was Great Backyard Bird Count was launched in February of 1998. And it was the first opportunity for birders to make use of their checklists of bird observation. So it was a paper based world before then. This was at the dawn of the internet. And the GBBC was a project conceived originally by Cornell Lab of Ornithology on Audubon, and then joined by Birds Canada, to prove that birding could have a wider purpose, sharing data on birds via the internet. And in that first year, there were 14,300 people in the US that submitted data to the GBBC website. Of course, now it's grown to over 380,000 plus people that joined last year. So it's, it's a quite a sustainable effort, that people like to share information about birds. And in terms of the choice of the word backyard was really meant to make this program accessible to a wide audience. That was from the very beginning. That was a goal to make sure that we could invite people interested in birds no matter their skill set, no matter how, what kind of programs they have they're involved in to be approachable, something that's easy to do accessible to a wide audience. So the word backyard I don't think was meant to be taken too, literally, but instead refers to any place you'd like to bird the world can be your backyard.

Andrea Gress  09:12

Yeah, your neighborhood or your local patch. Right. 

Kathy Dale  09:16

Right. 

Andrea Gress  09:17

Very cool. It's kind of funny. Like, I just don't think about how much has changed when you you know, like the fact that this was starting out as a real test of how technology could be used to track birds. Back in 1998, how much has changed how many people are hooked in and connected the quality of the apps and the tools that we have, it's unreal how far this program has come over time.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  09:42

One of my favorite little tidbits that I think Kathy and Kerrie probably both like to is that GBBC was sort of the test case for even putting the dollars and the effort into building the eBird tool, which is now one of the most commonly used conservation tools, when we're looking at data around birds, so I like to toot GBBC's horn that we were kind of the yes, people love this, people are going to do this. So maybe we should invest in a tool that we can provide to the general public so that they can submit their bird sightings. So we were sort of, you know, we were at the cutting edge of history there with really demonstrating that Citizen Science and bird observations would be something people would take seriously.

Andrea Gress  10:25

So cool. And man, did it work? Because yeah, eBird is huge, globally. It's, it's really exciting. Now, Kerrie, could you tell me more about you know, what is involved with taking part in a GBBC? You know, what, what does the event actually look like for participants?

Kerrie Wilcox  10:42

Well, it's actually really simple to take part in. So birders across the globe come together to watch, count, study, and celebrate birds. So it's held every February for four days in Canada, it's Family Day weekend. And in the US, it's Presidents Day weekend. So this year, it's February 17 to 20th. And to participate, people are just asked to watch and count birds for at least once during the event. So while they're watching, they record any information they see or hear. And then they submit their counts using the Merlin bird app, or the eBird mobile app or the eBird website. And that's it, you can count as many times as you like. And from as many locations as you like, over the four days. We just asked you to submit a new list for each time and each new location that you count from. So you can even do a count out your window. You don't even have to go outside. It's that easy.

Andrea Gress  11:47

That's pretty cool. Do you think that there are participants who try to you know, beat their record for the year before for how many checklists they can submit?

Kerrie Wilcox  11:56

Oh, definitely. I've gotten emails from people saying, I submitted 26 checklists over the weekend.

Andrea Gress  12:06

That's so cool. Like kind of like marathon birding over the weekend. That's, that's a lot of fun.

Kerrie Wilcox  12:11

Yeah, there's a lot of competitive people out there participating.

Andrea Gress  12:16

Absolutely. Very cool. So let's, let's get into the importance of having these types of family-friendly, entry-level, bird-focused Citizen Science projects. Becca, Could you could you expand on just like the value that something like the GBBC brings?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  12:34

Sure, absolutely. So Citizen Science, which is also commonly referred to as Community Science is really a global, a growing global effort that we're seeing around the world really, where we're really helping to encourage people to connect to their communities wherever they are. And that can be that can take lots of different forms for GBBC it's obviously birds and the natural world. And we all know, I think, inherently that we are really all scientists, I would say that kids are probably some of the sharpest ones, right? They're constantly observing and wondering what they're hearing and seeing. And so Citizen Science is an opportunity to really harness that natural scientist that's in in really all of us, and then give it back to a bigger effort where we can actually learn things. And as you can imagine, the data that kind of comes out of the GBBC is expansive, it's, you know, distributed around the world. And we do it the same time, generally, every year. And we have lots of data. And like Kerrie alluded to earlier, no scientists can be in all those places every year at that time, right. But there are people there already. So if we just kind of provide a tool and a protocol, so that people can tell us and become a part of sort of that scientific process. It's just a wonderful way for us to really understand some of these big, more global kind of conservation issues. It's a wonderful way to feel empowered as an individual or even as a kid that might be aspiring to want to be in the scientific world. And just being able to see how even your own small scientific observations which you may not think of as being scientific, but they are they can really have a deeper impact on conservation issues around the world. So I think Citizen Science is one of the neatest ways that we're starting to sort of see the narrative around science kind of become bigger and more important and more collective.

Andrea Gress  14:29

Yeah, it becomes kind of a household thing that we're all just doing and, and feeding into and learning from and that's, that's pretty awesome and big. 

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  14:38

Absolutely. 

Andrea Gress  14:39

So how does the great backyard bird count compared to other programs? Like I know, Australia's Got the Ozzie bird count, or there's the Big Garden Birdwatch out in the UK. How does it compare?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  14:49

Yeah, absolutely. They are actually very similar. And kind of playing on that name question. I was looking at the Big Garden Birdwatch and I was remembered I had talked to somebody and they use the term garden that kind of is synonymous with backyard because a lot of people use gardens for that same word. So one of the fun things about this in other places around the world is that they're sort of personalizing it right to their own language, their own narrative, about getting a sense of the birds that are in and around their communities. And they'll use different words for that. And I don't actually know when their counts began. But you know, like, have they been doing them 20 years or five years, I don't know. But it doesn't really matter. If they're doing these counts over time. And really getting a snapshot of bird populations in these annual accounts in the same area, you can really start to begin to see patterns with birds, right. And that data becomes immensely powerful for scientists to really be able to understand what's going on with birds and biodiversity in our planet. And the unfortunate news is that the data that is coming out of some of these big counts is telling us that we're in trouble, right, we're generally seeing declines in bird populations. And we wouldn't necessarily know that we wouldn't be able to quantify that without projects like these that have been going on year over year, in these various countries and globally. So this data is critical. And it's actually the sounding board for, hey, we got to do something about this, right, we have to collectively come together. Because as many people know who are listening, we can't shift policies around birds and conservation issues without having the data. So data is sort of the bedrock for being able to make changes. And then conservationists can look conservationists can look at that data and say, hey, we're seeing an increase in, for example, Wood Ducks right now. And I wonder if that's because actually, yes, it's because we've been doing specific things to preserve wetlands. So having this data tells us, you know, where we need to be paying attention to whether the conservation projects are working or not. And if we don't have the data, we don't have that information.

Andrea Gress  16:59

I love that you used a positive example, my brain always goes negative about, you know, the different species that are declining. And you sit, you know, here's an example of where conservation efforts are working. And our data is showing us that so we can focus, our energy and our resources to other conservation actions that we know will work or, you know, create novel new ideas to try and do the same thing for other species. I think I think that was a lovely example. 

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  17:23

Exactly. 

Andrea Gress  17:24

So this is a worldwide event. Kathy, I'm curious if you could tell us which countries have the most participants. But before you do, I want our listeners to just take a moment, wherever you are, take a brief moment and think to yourself, what what are the top three countries that participate in the great backyard bird count? I'll give you a moment.

Warblers Podcast  17:48

*Bird Song*

Andrea Gress  17:57

All right, Kathy, let us know what are our top countries who participates the most in the GBBC.

Kathy Dale  18:05

So in 2022, this past February, the top three countries for numbers of checklists submitted were the US, India and Canada. There was also an increase in participation from Brazil, as we find that developing in-country collaborations helped to increase involvement of local communities. So that's been occurring in Brazil, several other countries started to rise in terms of the number of checklists, that includes Mexico, Australia, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, Ecuador, and Ireland. And I also want to mention that the appearance of a country in which I have family and that Saudi Arabia was very exciting to me, they're, they're way down on the list in terms of numbers of checklists. But it's fun to see, just look and see what countries are coming online and getting involved. And that that was personally exciting to me. But also want to mention that there's more than one way to think about top listings for involvement in the GBBC world. So it's not only numbers of checklists, but I would encourage listeners to look at last year's listings, because the top countries based on numbers of birds is quite different. So the top three in that category are Colombia, Ecuador, and India. And for those in Canada and the US, you can drill down into these results to see how your particular province or state stacks up. There's actually a friendly competition on numbers of checklists submitted between Ontario and California. So they take turns submitting more checklists from one year to another and it's just fun to see that

Andrea Gress  19:44

you say it's friendly, but I can almost hear people in both of those locations like gearing up for competitive

Kathy Dale  19:52

I guess we've thrown down the gauntlet.

Andrea Gress  19:53

Yeah, absolutely. You have. Oh, it's so interesting to know how big it is how much it's grown. It must be really fun to to see it kind of like, like spider web creeping across the globe each year more countries getting involved more people getting involved. It's it's really very cool. It sounds like this event is incredibly popular in India. What what's enabled the popularity to grow there so much?

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  20:18

Yeah, India has been really inspiring. I think for all of us just sort of watching this particularly the last couple of years. 2022 was definitely their their breakout year, what an incredible year they had a 28% increase in their, in their checklists, yeah, which is phenomenal. They had more than 40,000 checklists submitted, and more than 4000, or almost, I should say, almost 4000 people participating in their country, which is, which is huge. And one of the reasons why this has been so successful, As Kathy said, is really partnerships. Bird Count India is a local organization that takes GBBC really seriously, and they have created their own sort of outreach effort around it. So they reach out to schools, to universities, to community centers, and they get lots and lots of people excited and going out on bird walks. One particular school in Tamil Nadu submitted one school, a group of students 4316 checklists last year and reported 90 species. Yeah. 

Andrea Gress  21:26

That's awesome. 

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  21:27

Yeah, the power of of those groups to just show up is just really wonderful. So partnerships is a big part of it, and every partnership around the world that gets excited, you know, they're helping and inspiring their own community. And then they're contributing to this really fun, global effort.

Andrea Gress  21:42

That's really, really cool, and just bringing it back to how, you know, kids are our best scientists. And it's, it's lovely to hear just, I just love it. That's such a positive, such a positive program. So, so cool. So let's, let's bring it back home a little bit. I wonder if there's any highlights that you guys would like to share from Canadian or US GBBC events over the years.

Kathy Dale  22:06

Of course, the US had a bit of a head start in terms of participation since it started in the US. But I can tell you that through interactions with participants over the years, I know that anyone who enjoys seeing birds also enjoys seeing photos of birds that are posted by the participants in the GBBC. It's really fun. People enjoy looking at birds and other areas of the of the globe that people are seeing over the course of the weekend. So people really enjoy that. Some of our chapters use the program to host school or Scout events over the weekend. And these kids, of course, can participate from the warm safety of their classroom or their home.

Andrea Gress  22:47

Cool. And Kerrie, do you have any highlights from over the years?

Kerrie Wilcox  22:52

Well, rare birds are always super fun to hear about during the GBBC. So one in particular that I remember was from Canada. And it was a Mistle Thrush and it was recorded in Miramichi, I'm not sure if I pronounced it right, New Brunswick in 2018. And it just doesn't get any rarer than this. It was the first North American sighting of this bird on the GBBC. And in fact, it was the first first one ever recorded in North America. So I had to look up this bird in a bird book. It's a European species that looks an awful lot like an American Robin, but is speckled. So I thought that was super cool.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  23:35

Nice. Yeah. And kind of looking back at the last couple of years, we've we've been paying particular attention to GBBC as it relates to sort of what's been going on in the world, right COVID. And when we first started GBBC, when I first was kind of actively working on it, because I came to the project just three years ago. It was right before the pandemic hit. So then really 2021 and 2022 are kind of the two years to sort of look at it and what Kerrie, Kathy, and I thought was really interesting is 2021, as you can expect, when there was still a lot of shutdowns and lockdowns happening, we had record for that year record participation, just so many people turning to birds and nature as a form of sort of a positive thing, right that they could do and pay attention to, to kind of take their worries away from the very complicated stuff that was going on. And so it was so neat to see that our project had that positive escape effect for people. And then so we were very curious what was gonna happen in 2022. And when the numbers first started coming in, I think we all sort of like, oh, okay, it's gonna be a little bit of a down year. But when we dug into the data, it was so inspiring because what happened was in 2021, people were doing a lot of birding individually, right. So people weren't necessarily birding with school groups or community groups. Some of them weren't even in school. And so there was a lot of individuals, but when we look at the numbers of participants for 2022, we surpassed it by like 80,000, because people were were birding with people again. So larger groups were going out again. And I think one of the trickle effects is people fell in love with birding in 2021. And they brought people with them in 2022, to kind of share their love of birds and how this had really become a part of their lives. So I really, you know, there's, there's all different ways to look at all issues, right, but one positive spin on COVID is a lot of people turn to birds and nature. And then they shared that joy with other people. And you can really kind of see that in the GBBC data.

Andrea Gress  25:40

Yeah, it's become a really, almost contagious hobby, because everyone can participate wherever they are. And it's just, it's really accessible and a lot of fun. So like, let's get into these numbers, like what are we actually talking about in terms of participants in Canada and the US and globally?

Kerrie Wilcox  25:59

For Canada, it varies a little from year to year, but we've been on a steady rise every year. And in Canada, in particular, I think weather has a big impact on participation in years when temperatures are really frigid participation is is is a little lower. So I want to remind people that they can participate by just looking out their window, if it's minus 35, you don't go outside. So last year in Canada 34,000 eBird checklists were submitted, which is amazing. And another 24,000 Merlin bird IDs.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  26:40

The United States generally turns out pretty big. We generally get at least one checklist and usually, you know, many, many more than one from all of the states, including Washington, DC. So kind of every corner of the US is is represented and generally speaking, very frequently, California, New York and Florida are kind of the three highest three highest submitters in terms of checklists. And that was true for 2022. So pretty broad participation, which is really exciting to see. And there's always a few states that kind of show up in big numbers for the GBBC in the US.

Andrea Gress  27:17

So, Kerrie, in your opinion, what has been the biggest impact of the GBBC, both for birds and for people?

Kerrie Wilcox  27:26

Well, in my opinion, the biggest impact of the GBBC is that it brings people together from around the world for a common cause, which is helping birds. And we really saw this during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns forced people to socially isolate. But birders flocked to the GBBC. And it was amazing to see how this event brought everyone together. There were over 379,000 bird lists submitted around the world. And this, like compared with the year before, which was pre pandemic, it was almost a 50% increase. So this is amazing. And it was inspiring to watch the map light up on our website as people around the world were look, we're entering their their checklists. So studies have shown that birding is good for people's mental health. It gives us a connection to nature that makes us feel happier and less stressed. So by participating in the GBBC not only are people helping birds, but they're also helping themselves.

Andrea Gress  28:36

I love it. The birds they don't necessarily need us on this world, but we certainly do need them. So before we wrap up, do any of you have any juicy, Great Backyard Bird Count stories that you can share with the listeners? You know, perhaps a favourite moment from a past bird count? Let's start with Becca.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  28:58

All right. Um, I always have fun juicy moments. But one of my favourite juicy moments is during eruption years. And we've had eruption years, the last couple of years different species. But I remember one year doing my checklist. I have a kiddo and we were doing our checklist together. And Evening Grosbeaks landed and they're generally not in our area. All winter. If we do see them, it's a special occurrence. And it happened to be an eruption year that year for the Evening Grosbeaks they were having a hard time finding resources further north where they generally are and they had dropped down into New York and it was just so beautiful to see them with that bright yellow and black plumage in those big bills. They're one of my favourite birds by far so it was a real special treat to see them that particular year.

Andrea Gress  29:51

Very cool. And Kathy, what about you any big highlights?

Kathy Dale  29:55

So for me, I fondly remember when my daughter was about six. She wanted to very much help identify and count the birds that are feeder during the Great Backyard Bird Count. And then she wanted to be able to write them down and report them online. She She worked hard to learn to identify the common feeder birds and was so excited about it. And I just I just love I really enjoyed being involved with her when she was young.

Andrea Gress  30:23

A hardcore scientist, right from the age of six. I love it. And what about you, Kerrie, any good stories?

Kerrie Wilcox  30:31

Well, a proud moment for me was the GBBC in 2021, Canada submitted 43,000 checklists, and had at least one from each province, all 10 provinces and three territories, and Ontario, delivered an impressive 21,600 checklists, giving it the highest participation for any state or province. So we beat California yay. That was really a great moment for me. And that year, too, I had an Eastern Screech Owl show up in my backyard. And during the pandemic, we had worked hard to make all these Wood Duck boxes and put them around our property. And that was the first day I ever saw something use one. That was really cool. 

Andrea Gress  31:29

Very, very cool. You just never know what you're gonna see. Right? Alright. So, you know, I love learning about this. It's been so awesome having you guys on! Where can people learn more about the program and get involved this season?

Kathy Dale  31:43

So the best place to start is by going to the website, it's simple to remember, it's birdcount.org. Go there and look for the participate link. And there's a lot of really good materials there that step you through how to get involved. And I want to make sure to underscore that all skill levels are welcome. So as noted during the pandemic, we had a lot of new birders participate. And we welcome anyone who has an interest in birds.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  32:20

If you are listening, and you have a community group, a scout group, you're an educator, your librarian, just think about this as a fun way to kind of get people excited to do something in February. I know especially in the northern parts of the United States and Canada, February can feel really long. You know, you're just getting kind of dreary and tired. And this is one way to really pep it up and have have a fun event and gives you something to look forward to for spring because you know that pretty soon the migrants are going to start moving back. So anybody even if you're a teacher or have a group of people, bring them along, sign them up this year and have fun. 

Kerrie Wilcox  32:57

This program is fantastic for people just either new to birding or new to Citizen Science. It's a great opportunity to give it a try without a big commitment. You know if they if you love it, there's lots of other programs you can get involved with in the future at either Cornell, Audubon or Birds Canada.

Andrea Gress  33:20

Awesome little stepping stone to get involved in this February. Yeah, the Great Backyard Bird Count so much fun. It runs from February 17 to 20th. Visit birdcount.org. To find out all those details. We'll leave a link in our episode description of course. Thanks again. Kathy, Kerrie, and Becca for joining us. It's been such a such a delight to have the three of you with all of your awesome backyard bird count knowledge on the podcast.

Kathy Dale  33:50

Thank you.

Becca Rodomsky-Bish  33:51

Great to be here. Yeah, thank you. You

Andrea Gress  33:53

know, all right, thanks. Get birding folks. Go sign up. The warblers is a podcast of Birds Canada. Our goal is to bring you the information you need to discover, enjoy and protect birds. If you like what you hear, please subscribe. Leave a review and share this podcast with everyone you know, Birds Canada relies on the support of donors like you visit birdscanada.org/warblerspodcast to make a donation today. The warblers is produced by Jody Allair, Ruth Friendship-Keller, Kate Dalgleish, Kris Cu and Andrea Gress with music by Jose Mora and art by Alex Nicole. Until next time, keep birding.