The Great Backyard Bird Count

My new career as a middle school teacher leaves me with very little time to blog, but I am making time today to write about this upcoming event:  the Great Backyard Bird Count.

The weekend of February 15th through 18th, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society are asking volunteer bird watchers to stand by their living room windows and count birds.  Participation is easy.  You simply watch for birds for at least 15 minutes, tally each species you see, and report the tallies online.  The bird count is in its 16th year.

If only the Great Backyard Bird Count had been this past weekend.  My backyard was filled with birds, including snowbirds, nuthatches and four kinds of woodpecker.  There was even an immature bald eagle!  Delaney and I spotted it Saturday morning just past our fence.  We thought it was a red tailed hawk at first, until we realized it was bigger than a hawk.  A lot bigger.  The bird in this photo is about the same age as the eagle we saw. 

For information on the bird count, go to www.BirdCount.org