The Great Backyard Bird Count--India is back! The dates are 14-17 February 2014. Join in this global birding event.
WHAT
GBBC is a worldwide event. Last year birders from 111 countries took part, counting around 35 million individual birds of 4,000 species. Indian birders submitted 400+ lists of 500+ species. You can see a summary of the global results here
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/science-stories/2013summary
and the India results here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwpQkYOLo9ZdcjFKZXEtMmhLVlk/edit?usp=sharing
WHY
Most importantly, it's fun! More seriously, these annual snapshots of bird populations help to answer a variety of important questions, including how birds are affected by habitat changes and weather, and whether populations and distributions are changing. More details are here: http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/whycount.html
WHEN
Any or all days between 14 and 17 February 2014
HOW
Go birding for at least 15 min, listing all the species you see, with rough count of each. It doesn't matter if you can't identify every single species -- what you can identify is good enough! Login to http://www.ebird.org/ and submit your species list.
More details at http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/howto.html
In brief:
1. Go to http://www.ebird.org/ and create an account (Do familiarise yourself).
2. Select your location on a map.
3. Choose kind of count you have made (e.g. travelling or stationary).
4. Give start time and duration.
5. Enter your list.
6. Share your list with others via email, Facebook or Twitter. Some examples of lists from 2013 are here:
http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/view/checklist?subID=S13006470
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S13006074
http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/view/checklist?subID=S12979749
As in 2013, this year again people all over India are participating. Some are also organizing small events at local parks or lakes for the public, including children, to take part in the count and learn more about birds.
If you are feeling ambitious, your local birder/naturalist group could use GBBC to carry out a more formal project. For example, you could ask "what is the importance of green/open spaces for urban birds?" To answer this, one could organise groups to go out and generate one set of lists from open/green spaces (eg, wetlands, parks); and another set of lists from from other kinds of city habitats: commercial areas, residential areas -- basically, highly built-up areas. Then one could ask how many and which species are restricted to open/green spaces, and how many appear to be adaptable and occur also in other city habitats. A possible conclusion could be "Green spaces are essential for the survival of 60% of [your city's] birds". With some planning and enough birders, such a project would be possible to do in the four days of the GBBC.
Bird Count India
https://www.facebook.com/birdcount.india
https://twitter.com/birdcountindia
For more details: http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/whycount.html