Christmas Bird Count (CBC) season is upon us again! This is a great time to join others and cooperate in a massive effort across the Western Hemisphere to take a snapshot of bird occurrence around the holidays. For three weeks each year (14 December to 5 January) tens of thousands of birders head out to conduct the Audubon CBC. These counts are cooperative efforts to get the best count of birds in a single 15-mile diameter circle. They depend upon the efforts of multiple parties of observers with each group checking different parts of the count circle, combining for a final count total that can be compared to totals for the past 118 years to help understand changes in bird populations.
eBirding on the CBC
While doing your CBC, eBird Mobile makes it easy to keep your tallies through the day. Here are our tips for making your CBC eBirding as helpful as possible.
- Only submit lists that include birds observed by your CBC group: do not group lists from other birding parties together
- Keep multiple lists throughout the day: ideally one for each stop, or perhaps one for each road.
- Include only one-way distance in your traveling counts: both CBC and eBird measure distance as one-way distance
Here are some more useful links for eBird best practices and CBC resources: