UPDATE:

We are gearing up for another season of My Yard Counts!
Its easy - 20-minute birding sessions in your backyard, 3 days in a row, throughout spring and summer!

Reporting on backyard habitat will begin in April and continue through to the end of August.  Beginning in April, all participants will be able to  report data directly into eBird. 

As we complete analyses of data from the first season of My Yard Counts, we are able to refine the backyard habitat questions. Participants will be able to answer these questions from the eBird data entry site mid-season.

Please be sure your email address remains  up-to-date in eBird.  Click the My eBird tab on the eBird website in order to make any updates or corrections to your information and bird data.

About My Yard Counts

My Yard Counts is a new citizen-science project that combines bird-watching observations around residences in rural, suburban, and urban settings with information about yards. By participating, you will help researchers identify the features in yards that are most important to birds.
 
To help, all you have to do is count all the birds you see in the immediate vicinity around your residence during 20-minute sessions of bird watching scheduled according to your own preferences throughout the spring and summer. You'll fill out a one-time, online questionnaire about your yard or the area around your residence. Also, you'll have the option of keeping track of pet-wildlife interactions and reporting what you see online.

Why My Yard Counts

We are testing the idea that our public parks, refuges, and wilderness areas will function better for birds if the surrounding areas also favors birds. The quantity and quality of habitat everywhere, including residential areas, may make a difference to the fate of bird communities across the landscape. For example, exhausted migratory birds may find food and shelter in yards and parks as they travel thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds. Your yard may even be an important nesting area where birds such as robins, mockingbirds, cardinals, jays, and many other species can raise their young.

Even as we protect wilderness areas for birds, we can explore the impacts of improving altered, human-dominated landscapes in between, yard by yard.

MAKE YOUR YARD COUNT FOR BIRDS TODAY!

HOW TO PARTICIPATE