Passport to Texas

Cedar Waxwing: Ben Thomas, Georgia

Birding: Great Backyard Bird Count Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Birds indicate the health of our environment, says Pat Leonard, who coordinates the Great Backyard Bird Count for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a joint project with the Audubon Society and Bird Studies Canada.

07— And, so, by understanding what’s happening to them – both good and bad –we have a measure of what we should be doing to preserve the environment.

The bird count, in its sixteenth year, is a citizen science project where birders around the world tally species not only in backyards, but anywhere there are birds—and then report their findings online.

17—What we’re going to do for the 2013 count, is integrating it with another big online bird checklist program we run with Audubon called eBird. What that will allow us to do is have much more valuable data, because the locations that people put in for their birding activity is much more precise.

Birders must register with the website bird count dot org to input their findings. Researchers use the data to study the various species and their habitat. And Pat says Texas participation is high.

18— Texas is such a birdy state. And in the count we had for 2012, it was number two after California for the most species. Corpus Christi was actually number one in terms of localities reporting the most species. They had 184. You can’t say birds, bird count, and leave Texas out of the equation.

Go to bird count dot org for more information about the Great Backyard Bird Count, February 15 -18.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.