eBirding your Christmas Bird Count
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 (organized in Canada by Bird Studies Canada). 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. Compilers add the efforts of the various teams together and assemble a final count total, which can be compared to totals for the past 117 years to understand changes in bird populations. eBird collects data at a finer scale and from single parties of birders, and eBird Mobile makes it easy to keep your tallies through the day. We invite each group to submit their single-party lists to eBird, but please do remember to 1) limit your mileage by breaking your day into more than one list; 2) remove backtracking miles from your totals (both CBC and eBird measure distance as one-way distance). For guidance on best practices for submitting your CBC to eBird, see these links: