Citizen Science in Action

The Christmas Bird Count

The Christmas Bird Count, celebrated annually since 1900, is one of the longest-running citizen science programs, with one of the largest ecological datasets available. It involves citizens in observing and collecting information about local birds between December 14th and January 5th each year. The Christmas Bird Count has been going on for over a century and is now a nationwide project with more than 2,000 amateur birding groups participating. Learn more about the Christmas Bird Count and few yearly results.

The Value of the Christmas Bird Count

Change in latitude of bird center of abundance, 1966-2013 (EPA, 2014)

This figure shows annual change in latitude of the center of bird abundance for 305 widespread bird species in North America from 1966 to 2013. Each winter is represented by the year in which it began (for example, winter 2013–2014 is shown as 2013). The shaded band shows the likely range of values, based on the number of measurements collected and the precision of the methods used. Explore more about this data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency here. 

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Building Sustainable Communities: Monitoring and Evaluation Copyright © by Ryan Plummer; Amanda Smits; Samantha Witkowski; Bridget McGlynn; Derek Armitage; Ella-Kari Muhl; and Jodi Johnston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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