The 25th annual Great Backyard Bird count is on to help keep our feathered friends flying for years to come.
“We try to get a snapshot of birds before they fly away and migrate elsewhere,” said Andrew Holland the national media relations director, Nature Conservancy of Canada.
“The reason why it’s so important to have people of all ages help us out is because scientists and researchers just can’t do it alone.”
This is one of the world’s largest community science projects led by the National Audubon Society. Birds Canada ensures the count is completed each year.
The data helps the Nature Conservancy of Canada find out where they need to focus their conservation efforts.
“If you give only 15 minutes of your time, you’re a part of a global effort to help bird populations which are really struggling. For example in Canada and the United States there was a report done three years ago. It showed that over the last 50 years Canada and the United States lost 2.9 billion birds,” said Holland.
For those who aren’t aviary experts a free app called Merlin can help identify and log any birds seen.
“There’s over 500 different bird species that live in British Columbia and this is a combination of resident birds and migratory birds. There’s over 300 different kinds of breeding birds that use different areas of British Columbia as breeding habitat because it’s a big part of the Pacific flyway so you got birds coming from various directions into the province,” said Holland.