Central America

For many Central American eBirders, the Global Big Days are absolute highlights on the year’s birding calendar. Each year, the number of checklists submitted in Central America during the May and October Big Days is higher than the year before, as birders come together to celebrate our passion. Birds unite us!

This year, we celebrate Global Big Day on Saturday 14 May 2022. Participating is easy—you can even be part of Global Big Day from home. If you can spare 5 or 10 minutes, report your bird observations to eBird online or with our free eBird Mobile app. If you have more time, submit several checklists of birds throughout the day. You never know what you might spot. Your observations help us better understand global bird populations through products like these animated abundance maps brought to you by eBird Science.

Last year, Global Big Day brought birders together virtually from more countries than ever before. More than 51,000 people from 192 countries submitted 134,000 checklists with eBird, setting four new world records for a single day of birding. Will you help us surpass last year’s records? However you choose to participate, please always put safety first and follow your local guidelines.

How to participate

• Get an eBird account: eBird is a worldwide bird checklist program used by millions of birders. It’s what allows us to compile everyone’s sightings into a single massive Global Big Day list—while at the same time collecting the data to help scientists better understand birds. Sign up here. It’s 100% free from start to finish.
• Watch birds on 14 May: It’s that simple. You don’t need to be a bird expert or go out all day long, even 10 minutes of birding from home counts. Global Big Day runs from midnight to midnight in your local time zone. You can report what you find from anywhere in the world.
• Enter what you see and hear in eBird: You can enter your sightings via our website or download the free eBird Mobile app to make submitting lists even easier. Please enter your checklists before 17 May to be included in our initial results announcement.
• Watch the sightings roll in: During the day, follow along with sightings from more than 170 countries in real-time on our Global Big Day page.

eBird Trip Reports on Global Big Day

NEW this year! eBird Trip Reports are a great way to share where you went and the birds you found on Global Big Day. Simply create an eBird Trip Report for 14 May 2022. As you submit lists and upload media throughout the day, they’ll be added to your report automatically. Send the trip report link to friends and family so they can follow along. (Learn more about eBird Trip Reports)

Create an eBird Trip Report to share your locations, species lists, and media from this year’s Global Big Day. You can create eBird Trip Reports for past Global Big Days as well!

Global Big Day Pro Tips

• If you’re new to eBird or want to make your checklists more valuable for science and conservation, take our free eBird Essentials course.
• The Cornell Lab’s free Merlin Bird ID app can help you to identify the birds you see and hear on Global Big Day.
• Use eBird Mobile Explore to find recently reported species or new places to go birding nearby.
• Gain deep insight into the remarkable lives of your favorite species with Birds of the World. FREE ACCESS for Global Big Day starting 8am ET May 11th through 11:59pm ET May 15th.
• Take photos and sound recordings and add them to your checklist—they might end up on the Global Big Day page!
• Make your sightings more valuable: submit complete checklists, keep counts of the birds that you see, and keep multiple checklists throughout the day.
• Share what you’re seeing on social media with #globalbigday!

Global Big Day Challenges

eBird Central America is pleased to announce two challenges for this year’s Global Big Day that we hope will motivate you to go out and collect valuable bird data—and have fun in the process! Each challenge is unique to Central America, and for each of the challenges a winner will be randomly selected from each of the seven Central American countries: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. That’s fourteen prizes! To participate, your checklists from GBD will need to be complete checklists with counts for each of the species (no x’s). See below for further requirements.

Sound recording challenge

If you submit at least three recordings during Global Big Day on your eligible checklists, you are automatically competing to win a free online Sound Recording Course from the Cornell Lab Bird Academy. This self-paced course includes instructional videos, tutorials, and listening exercises to help you become a sound recordist. This course is designed for anyone interested in birds with a focus on field techniques to help you record bird sounds no matter the equipment you have. In this course you will:

• Explore bird sounds from around the world
  Learn about the fundamentals of sound and how to visualize sound
• Understand bird sounds
  Learn more about the sounds birds make
• Match your gear to your goals
  Select a microphone, recording unit, and other gear to help you succeed.
• Prepare for the field
  Learn to find birds and predict their behavior to expand your recording opportunities
• Craft great recordings
  Practice setting up your equipment, aiming the microphone, and strategic positioning to help you make great recordings.
• Curate, edit, and share your recordings 
  Learn how to take your field recordings to the next level to share with friends, family, and the birding community to power your birding skills, science, and conservation.

If you have always been curious about recording bird song, this is your chance to learn from world experts and become an accomplished bird sound recordist!

Remember that on Global Big Day, you can make decent recordings with just a cell phone, especially if you follow these tips. The three recordings can be on one single checklist or divided over two or three checklists, as long as they were recorded by the same person on 14 May 2022.

Checklist challenge

If you submit at least 10 eligible checklists during Global Big Day, you are automatically competing to win a free one-year subscription to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World, a powerful resource where biologists and birders can find comprehensive life history information on birds. On the weekend of Global Big Day, access to all 10,824 species accounts in Birds of the World will be free for everyone, providing you with an opportunity to dive in and see what this resource has to offer. The winners of this challenge will have access for a full year.

Breaking up your birding into shorter checklists provides more precise information about where and when you encountered birds, which adds value to your observations for science and conservation. You can still easily generate an overview of the day’s sightings with Trip Reports.

On 14 May, we hope you’ll be a part of our global birding team. Have fun, enjoy the birds you find, stay safe, and share your sightings on eBird. Because in our world, every bird counts.