Each February, for four days, the world comes together for the love of birds. Over these four days the Cornell Lab of Ornithology invites people to spend time in their favorite places watching and counting as many birds as they can find and reporting to Cornell. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.
Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab and the National Audubon Society, theGreat Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was the first online participatory science projects to collect data on wild birds and to display the results in near real time. Birds Canada jointed the project in 2009 to provide an expanded capacity to support participation in Canada. In 2013 the project became global and started to
enter data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related participatory community science project.
This event is a 20+ year tradition and helps provide scientists with a snapshot of bird populations. This 4-day count is held over a long weekend in February each year.
Old Rag Master Naturalists will be hosting a bird count at and the Hoover Ridge Park and Cedar Mountain Battlefield
walk as part of the annual Great Backyard Bird Count.