At 25, Backyard Bird Count shows power of citizen science
For a quarter of a century, the Great Backyard Bird Count has been growing globally and is providing scientists with data on bird populations
It’s a given that when the Great Backyard Bird Count begins Friday, Steve and Janet Kistler of Hart County, Kentucky, will be joining in. They’ve done so every year since the now-global tradition began 25 years ago.
For Moira Dalibor, a middle-school math teacher a couple hours away in Lexington, this will be the first count. She’s leading a group of students and parents to an arboretum for an exercise in data-gathering.
They’re expected to be among hundreds of thousands of people around the world counting and recording over four days, Feb. 17-20. Last year, about 385,000 people from 192 countries took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, or GBBC.
“Every year we see increased participation,” and 2022 was a big jump, says Becca Rodomsky-Bish, the project's leader at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in Ithaca, New York, which organizes the count along with the National Audubon Society and Birds Canada.
