Get Outside

The Great Backyard Bird Count

Every February, count for as little as 15 minutes in your own backyard to help expand our understanding of birds.
Photo: Camilla Cerea/Audubon
Get Outside

The Great Backyard Bird Count

Every February, count for as little as 15 minutes in your own backyard to help expand our understanding of birds.

The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a free, fun, and easy event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of bird populations. Participants are asked to count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the four-day event and report their sightings online at birdcount.org. Anyone can take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, from beginning bird watchers to experts, and you can participate from your backyard, or anywhere in the world.

Each checklist submitted during the GBBC helps researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society learn more about how birds are doing, and how to protect them and the environment we share. Last year, more than 160,000 participants submitted their bird observations online, creating the largest instantaneous snapshot of global bird populations ever recorded.

The 27th annual GBBC will be held Friday, February 16, through Monday, February 19. Please visit the official website at birdcount.org for more information. If you would like to participate in a guided Audubon New York GBBC event, please see our events below.

Saturday, February 17

Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center (Oyster Bay) at 1PM
Online/In-person Zoom presentation followed by outdoor bird count. Register here.

Inlet Pond County Park (Greenport) at 9AM
North Fork Audubon Society. Register here.

How you can help, right now