The Great Backyard Bird Count--2011--in Review

This was the best year we have had for the Great Backyard Bird Count! It is our third year of participation, and we had the highest number of birds we have had ever (it isn't hard to get more than, um, zero).

We counted from home all 4 days. Between 3 and 4 seems to be a good time to count at our house. we tried morning on Sunday but saw nothing, then around 3 we started seeing lots of birds. We didn't see a great variety of birds, but at least we saw something!

Here is the rundown:
Friday: 4 mallards, 3 crows, 2 house sparrows (yes, our house sparrows stuck around this year! No hiding, woo-hoo!)
Saturday: 1 crow, 3 house sparrows
Sunday: 3 mallards in the morning. 3 crows, 8 house sparrows, 1 junco in the afternoon. This was the best day we had, ironically, since it also snowed over a foot! The afternoon birds were all seen when it looked like this outside:



Not kidding! See the sparrow in this picture? It kept getting covered in snow!



After that great day, on Monday we saw? Nothing. Well, Kiddo claims to have seen a huge flock of geese (at least 50, maybe 100!) but we can't verify that...and since he didn't count them, we won't report them anyway.

Still, 28 birds in 3 days, beats the last two years! I have read a few wrap-up posts about the Great Backyard Bird Count this year, and I admit, I am jealous of the people who manage to see hundreds of birds in the four days. I have to remind myself that it is still winter here in MN, I don't live in Florida. We'll take what we can get.

Did you participate? What was your favorite sighting?

If you are interested in seeing this year's results, here is a link!

(I never did figure out where everyone got their buttons this year!)

The Great Backyard Bird Count--2011

The Great Backyard Bird Count has begun!

We are having better luck than we did last year or the year before.

This year, Kiddo is eager to look up the birds we see. He is also eager to hear them, and thanks to the book Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song. It has most of the common birds we see, making it easy to hear them while we continue our viewing.

Are you counting this year? How is it going?

The Great Backyard Bird Count--2010 results

Our results this year were for the Great Backyard Bird Count were not much better than our results last year. We counted in our own yard for three days (Friday, Sunday, and Monday). What did we see? Ducks, but since they were in flight in the distance, we couldn't identify what kind they were so they didn't count. A little bird on a tree that might have been a woodpecker, but it was too fast and stayed mostly on the back of the tree, so we never got a good look at it. Again, it didn't count. Finally, on the last day, we had 2 mallards fly over close enough that we could definitively identify them--they counted! Yay! We didn't even get to count our resident sparrows! They hid for the whole weekend. We have seen them literally every day since then. Sigh.

Remember how I had also scheduled a trip to Grandpa's house, where there are ALWAYS a ton of birds? Yeah, a ton. Except for the day we were there. We did manage to see a northern cardinal, 2 black-capped chickadees, 2 crows, and 2 red-tailed hawks in the hour we watched. I would have said that was phenomenal, except that the last time we were there the feeder was literally crawling with birds, including 2 kinds of woodpeckers, juncos, blue jays, a male and female cardinal, and sparrows. None of them came to visit while we watched, though.

Grandpa said the birds have been there often since that day, though. He had a good chuckle about it, so I guess something good came from it. I like to make him laugh.

Even with the lack of birds, Kiddo thought it was great. He wants to do it more often (as he wanted last year) so I think we'll have to work it into our curriculum to do a backyard bird count once a month. That will give us the opportunity to see what kinds of birds we have when.

And next year? Next year we will have a feeder out starting in December!

You can see the results from this years count here.

The Great Backyard Bird Count!!

I am frightfully behind! The Great Backyard Bird count is this weekend! Last year we had terrible luck. We had very few birds. To stave off disappointment (mine more than anyone else's!) this year, there has been no build up. I have also made plans to head to grandpa's house in the country to watch some birds, too. Grandpa has bird feeders, and lots of feeder birds. The likelihood of seeing something there is far greater! I am frantically trying to get things ready--binoculars located, bird books found, checklists printed, etc. We'll be ready tomorrow to start the four days!

Participation is so easy! Pick a spot and watch for at least 15 minutes. Then fill out a form, and submit your results. The results are fun to explore, too. Go, take a look! I'll let you know how our count turns out.

The Great Backyard Bird Count in review

We completed the Great Backyard Bird Count last weekend. All that is left to do is log our results into the system. We watched every day from Feb. 13 to Feb. 16. Unfortunately the birds did not cooperate. We saw a mallard flying by, two house sparrows (no surprise there, they live in the bush outside our kitchen window!), 4 black-capped chickadees, and a crow. The final day of the count we saw nothing but two birds flying in the distance that we could not identify. The chickadees were the most exciting because they were very active in the yard. I was a bit disappointed, since usually we see a good number of birds at our house.

The upside is that Kiddo LOVED it. He thinks we should do our own backyard bird count on a regular basis. I think I'll sign us up for ebird. That way we can log our sightings year-round. And it looks like I should plan some nature hikes to good birding areas this spring and summer!

The Great Backyard Bird Count

I have read about The Great Backyard Bird Count on more than one board and more than one blog. DH and I have long been birders and Kiddo and Kutey enjoy their sightings as well, so I figured, why not!

It seems fairly simple: pick a spot, watch for at least 15 minutes, and count and identify as many of the birds you see as you can. There are lists of common birds for the time of year for your area available, and the report form seems fairly simple. You can do it one day, two days, three days, or all four days. You can pick one spot, or do more than one spot.

The educational opportunities abound with this, of course, so we'll be doing more than just counting. It also feeds well into our annual trip to the Mississippi River to watch the bald eagles. That comes in just over 2 weeks.

I'll let you know what other resources I find, but there is a great coloring/activity book at Homeschool Mate. I doubt I will use the whole thing this year, but maybe I can print some of the more likely birds (black-capped chickadee, blue jay, robin, to name a few), and use those for this time. I think we'll also read "In the Snow," which is a book we were given a few years ago. It is very simple, but talks about feeding the birds (and other critters) so it would be a good story to add. Any one have any other ideas for books to read?