Great Backyard Bird Count

February 16 - 19, 2024

Connect to birds, to nature, and with each other

Each year people from around the world come together to watch, learn about, count, and celebrate birds. Join us, February 16-19, 2024.

Our History

Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was the first online citizen science project, also referred to as community science, to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real time. Birds Canada joined the project in 2009 to provide an expanded capacity to support participation in Canada. In 2013, we became a global project when we began entering data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science (community science) project. No matter what corner of the world you live-in or visit, we want to share in your joy of birdwatching.

Project Goal

Each February, for four days, the world comes together for the love of birds. Over these four days we invite people to spend time in their favorite places watching and counting as many birds as they can find and reporting them to us. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.

In 2020 we designed a new website to help make your 4-day count easy, clear, and inspiring! In an effort to spread the love of birdwatching even further. Participating is easy, fun to do alone, or with others with appropriate pandemic precautions, and can be done anywhere you find birds.

We recommend observing birds for at least fifteen minutes. See this page for counting instructions. A .pdf of more detailed counting instructions is available here.

Choose the easiest way for you to share your birds:

All you need is a free Cornell Lab account to participate. This account is shared with Merlin, eBird, Project FeederWatch and other projects at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If you already have an account please use the same username and password for submitting your bird list for the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Great Backyard Bird Count 2023 international:

  • 7,538 species of birds identified

  • 202 participating countries

  • 390,652 eBird checklists

  • 372,905 Merlin Bird IDs

  • 151,479 photos, videos, and sounds added to Macaulay Library

  • 555,291 estimated global participants

    Numbers may change slightly as final checklists are added and validated by our reviewers. Data reflect totals through March 6, 2023.