Community Advocacy
Explore ways bird lovers can participate in community science efforts to protect birds.
eBird
eBird is a free online platform that allows birders to track their sightings and share their knowledge with others. It was launched in 2002 as a joint project by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
BirdMapper
The Global Bird Collision Mapper is a Web app for reporting and viewing the locations of bird collisions with buildings across the globe.
Great Backyard Bird Count
Each February, the world comes together for the love of birds. Across four days, people spend time in their favorite places watching and counting as many birds as they can find and reporting them. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.
Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was the first online participatory science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time.
Christmas Bird Count
The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is entering its 122nd year of existence! Originally created in 1900 by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, the Christmas Bird Count replaced an old holiday tradition known as the Christmas ‘Side Hunt.’ The Christmas ‘Side Hunt’ was a wildlife census where people would go to an area and shoot all the wildlife in their path, a popular strategy back in the 1800s. Frank Chapman and others had observed a decline in bird populations and suggested a change in methodology, establishing the first-ever Christmas Bird Count.
Conservation efforts have grown tremendously since 1900, as has the reach of the Christmas Bird Count! The CBC is primarily conducted by citizen scientists, like yourself, in conjunction with an Audubon chapter. Data is then sent to National Audubon, which has been managing this extensive database that has contributed to many studies regarding bird populations. CBC data has been listed as one of the 26 indicators of climate change by the Environmental Protection Agency and was also used in the American Bird Conservation Initiative’s and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s State of the Birds Report in 2009. This long-term data set provides us with population trends for hundreds of species of birds in North America, many of which are in decline.
Project Feederwatch
Project FeederWatch is organized by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada. A Community Science project, much like the Christmas Bird Count, Project FeederWatch encourages people to put up a bird feeder in their yard and periodically count the birds they see at their feeder. This is a winter-long survey, beginning as early as November through early April. Data is sent to Project FeederWatch to join a larger database that can help scientists track the movements of wintering birds over a large geographic range and trends in bird distribution and abundance.