Here are the only items you'll need: a piece of paper, a writing utensil, your eyes and a patch of ground. That's it! If you want to use binoculars, that will help, but they aren't necessary.
Find a place where you want to count. It can be your own back yard (a birdfeeder really helps) or it can be a park, a forest, a lake, anywhere you might find birds.
If you don't think you can identify the birds you see, there are ways to resolve that. You can enlist someone who knows birds to help you. You can go online to any good birding site for help. There are even apps that can help you, such as this one: Merlin
Now take fifteen minutes to count the birds you see. As a rule, you should count groups of birds as you see them, and then take the highest number of the same species that you saw all at once. That will reduce the possibility of counting the same bird twice. For example, if you see four goldfinches, and then ten goldfinches, and then three goldfinches, your recorded total would be ten. Write down a total for every bird you saw that you could identify. You can do this as many times as you want this weekend and Monday.
Once you've got your totals, you can go to this site to report them: Great Backyard Bird Count It's easy to sign in and make your report(s). Once you've done that, you can see statistics of where people are counting and what they've counted so far. They will even email you a copy of your report if you request it.
I've been doing this for several years and it's always fascinating to see what species of birds are in my back yard. This morning I counted eight different species in the same fifteen-minute span.
All of this information will help scientists determine where birds are and how their numbers are doing. It's important for them to have a snapshot from around the world ... and that's where we come in. They couldn't do it without us.
So get out and count! You'll be helping the scientists and the birds.
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