Audubon Rockies has partnered with two great stores in Fort Collins, Wild Birds Unlimited and Jax Ranch and Home, to celebrate this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count on Feb. 12 through 15. Participants get a free block of suet to attract birds to your home, office, or school. Simply come in to the Wild Birds Unlimited or Jax Ranch and Home from Feb. 7 through 15 during store hours to receive your gift (while supplies last). Suet is a combination of fat and seed that attracts winter hardy birds such as chickadees and woodpeckers who stay in Colorado unlike many migrating birds.
The Great Backyard Bird Count takes place each Presidents Day Weekend and is a free, fun and easy event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of bird populations. Participants are asked to count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the four-day event and report their sightings online at birdcount.org.
Anyone can take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, from beginning bird watchers to experts, and you can participate from your backyard, or anywhere in the world.
Last year, more than 143,000 volunteers in 100-plus countries shattered the previous record for the number of species tallied during the annual citizen science survey with birdwatchers recording 5,090 species, or 48 percent of the world’s total avian species—some 792 more species than 2014.
“The Great Backyard Bird Count gives adults and kids alike the opportunity to get to know the 400+ species of birds that live and migrate through our great State of Colorado,” says Alison Holloran, vice president and executive director of Audubon Rockies. “Not only that, but the Great Backyard Bird Count also lets you be a scientist for a few days – knowing the information you collect helps us better monitor and conserve our bird populations.”
Learn more about how to take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count at rockies.audubon.org. The GBBC is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society with partner Bird Studies Canada and is made possible in part by sponsor Wild Birds Unlimited.
The suet was generously donated by Midwest Engineered Systems, located in Loveland.