| The Milford Daily News
SUDBURY — It’s as simple as looking out your window or up at the sky during a walk.
Residents throughout the area are encouraged to take part in the 24th annual Great Backyard Bird Count this year, which runs Feb. 12-15.
Organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with the National Audubon Society and the Birds Canada Oiseaux Canada, the event is held to help researchers understand where bird populations are and how that has changed over the years.
Participation is simple and everyone can take part. From Feb. 12 to Feb. 15, people are encouraged to track the number of birds they see in the sky or around them. To record the data, to go to birdcount.org and catalog their findings.
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“It’s just a really great way for people to get involved with what we like to call citizen science, where the observations that you make to Cornell Lab Ornithology about the number and kind of birds that you see – whether it’s in your backyard or the park or a walk,” said Susan Maranaho, who owns Wild Birds Unlimited in Sudbury. The franchise business is a sponsor of the event.
Participants from around the world take part in the event. In 2019, bird watchers from more than 100 countries submitted more than 210,000 logs to Cornell Lab, and reported 6,850 species of birds, according to Laurene Hunt, who does marketing for the Sudbury store.
Becca Rodomsky-Bish, project leader for the count, said the event started because the Cornell Lab knew that people loved bird watching and reaching out with what they were seeing in the wild.
“What we found was that it was incredibly popular,” she said. “It started in North America, so we had a smaller pool of people to participate but thousands and thousands of people submitted lists in the first year to us.”
The event became so successful that in the early 2000s, the lab developed an internet database platform called e-bird to track bird findings, archives and other information. Today, the science project is used for more than just the Great Backyard Bird Count.
“eBird is among the world’s largest biodiversity-related science projects, with more than 100 million bird sightings contributed annually by eBirders around the world and an average participation growth rate of approximately 20% year over year,” reads a description of the project on its website. “A collaborative enterprise with hundreds of partner organizations, thousands of regional experts, and hundreds of thousands of users, eBird is managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.”
The data collected by e-bird has been used in a variety of academic and research projects, Rodomsky-Bish said.
The bird data is helpful for a variety of reasons. The Great Backyard Bird Count data is particularly useful in helping to understand the status of bird populations before they migrate, she said.
Since the event has been going on for nearly 25 years, they have a good picture of the changes over time.
The lab also has similar events throughout the year to spur people to use e-bird. In May, they have an event called Global Big Day and do another Big Day event in October.
Close to 250,000 people submit to the tool regularly, she said.
Maranaho said over the time she has participated in the project, she has seen changes in the birds she sees in her backyard.
“It’s really cool to see that change, but it’s also really cool to be part of a science project,” she said.
Cesareo Contreras can be reached at 508-626-3957 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @cesareo_r.
