The holiday season is usually a time to count your blessings – but some people count other things, in this case – birds.
The 54th annual Bird Count is underway today in Moncton – and it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Roger LeBlanc is a compiler for the Nature Moncton Christmas Bird Count and he says birds are counted not just locally, but across the entire continent to give researchers valuable information on the health of bird populations.
“People go out in the field and they count birds,” says LeBlanc. “Not only species of birds but numbers of birds, individual birds so you try to get a good idea of what the bird life in that 24 kilometer circle looks like.”
LeBlanc says the information is added to a database at Cornell University and is used by researchers and amateur bird watchers alike to analyze things like migratory patterns and evolution of bird life.
The information is used widely not just for research but also for the maps in books like Bird Field Guides and is a valuable tool for bird conservationists because it provides widespread and detailed data across the continent.
He adds the bird count is one of the longest running citizen science projects in the world – at more than a century of data collection.
