The 10th annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up Feb. 16-19.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A female ruby-throated hummingbird captured in a Birmingham backyard | [ Enlarge ]

Sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the event is a chance to discover the birds in your neighborhood and count for the record.

Observers simply count the highest number of each species they see during an outing or a sitting, and enter their tally on the Great Backyard Bird Count Website.

Visitors to the Website can also compare their sightings with results from other participants, as checklists pour in from throughout the U.S. and Canada. Together, these counts offer a real-time snapshot of the numbers and kinds of birds that people are finding, from Boreal Chickadees in Alaska to Anhingas in Florida.

"The Great Backyard Bird Count is a community celebration of birds, birding, and nature," Janis Dickinson, director of Citizen Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, says. "We often fail to notice how rich our surroundings are, but counting birds, even for just 15 minutes, is not only educational - it can provide a lasting source of enjoyment, turning a daily walk into a treasure hunt."

Paul Green, Audubons director of Citizen Science, says by submitting counts online, "birdwatchers can quickly seehow the dots they put on the map form new patterns that tell new stories about the birds that share the world in which we live, including our own backyards and parks."

Last year, participants submitted more than 60,000 checklists - and reported 7.5 million birds overall and 623 different species. The count helped chronicle the early spring migratory routes of Sandhill Cranes, documented lingering migrants such as Orange-crowned Warblers and Tree Swallows, revealed the ongoing range expansion of introduced Eurasian Collared-Doves, and recorded declining numbers of American Crows.

Also last year, birders from Fultondale, Alabama, submitted more checklists in the Great Backyard Birdcount of 2006 than any other community in the United States or Canada, according to the official results from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.

The Locust Fork Journal was the only news organization to report that in a story:
Fultondale Alabama Wins Backyard Birdcount Top Locality

This year, we have a novel idea on how to get some great bird photos, so don't forget to come back to this page at that time. As always, we will do our best to shock and amaze you, dear diary readers.