Have you got a spare 15 minutes this weekend? 

 The Great Backyard Bird Count is on February 17-20, 2017

Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds. Now, more than 160,000 people of all ages and walks of life worldwide join the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds. For the first time Vanuatu is going to join in and so can you! Either do your own count or join us on ours.

All you need to do is for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, February 17-20, 2017, simply tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see. You can count from any location, anywhere in the world, for as long as you wish!

You can conduct your own GBBC tally in your own garden, close to where you live at your school or place of work. Or if you want to join VESS we are meeting at Independence Park at 12 noon on Friday 17th (tomorrow) to count the birds we see there. So if you have 15 minutes spare in your lunch hour come and join the count. We will have our bird identification books there to help id the birds and Leilani, one of the VESS scientists will upload all the data from our count onto the GBBC database. 

If you want to do your own count all the information you need is on the GBBC website

Photo credit: Wojciech Dabrowka.