The Christmas Bird Count

                     The history of the Christmas Bird Count (CBC)

The CBC started in 1900 and used to be a Christmas hunting competition. Frank M. Chapman was an American ornithologist and began to notice the declining bird populations from the hunting competitions. In 1900 Chapman had the idea of the Christmas bird count. That year 27 birders reported 90 different species on December 14th!

  Information

This year’s CBC began a few days ago on December 14th 2021 and will continue till January 5th 2022. Last year 42,704,077 birds were reported around the world. If you want to participate, here is how it works :

1. Download eBird If you don’t have the eBird app please download it. Making the checklist on eBird helps scientists learn about bird populations.
2. Visit a location, find a trail, park, refuge ect. Please end the checklist before going to a new location!!
3. Report species, when you see/identify a species scroll through the list of species on your checklist. If you aren’t exactly sure what it is like a hawk for an example go to the bottom of the hawk list and there will be a box that says hawk sp.
4. Submit your list, to submit your checklist hit a green button at the bottom of the screen that says continue.  Enter the number of people and then hit the button that says submit.

You should participate in the CBC because it is one of the longest continuing citizen science projects on earth! It also helps track bird populations. The Missoula Christmas bird count was on Saturday, December 18th.

I hope you participate!