Join the world in connecting to birds February 13–16, 2026. Watch the video to learn more about the count. Play Video
Participating lead organizations
Spend time in your favorite places watching birds—then tell us about them! In as little as 15 minutes notice the birds around you. Identify them, count them, and submit your counts to help scientists better understand and protect birds around the world. If you already use eBird or Merlin, your submissions over the 4 days count toward GBBC.
Connect to Birds, to Nature, and with Each Other: Share your birds with us February 13-16 and be a part of this global event.
Be Part of a Global Event: Watch observations roll in from around the world. Each submitted checklist becomes a glowing light on our bird sightings map.
Learn more about this global event HERE. If you need help, contact your local bird shops or Audubon chapter.
Each February, for four days, the world comes together for the love of birds. Over these four days we invite people to spend time in their favorite places watching and counting as many birds as they can find and reporting them to us. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.
The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. The GBBC was the first online participatory-science project (also referred to as community science or citizen science) to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real time. Birds Canada joined the project in 2009 to provide an expanded capacity to support participation in Canada. In 2013, we became a global project when we began entering data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related participatory science (community science or citizen science) project.
Each year our participation grows as more people of all ages around the world spend their weekend counting, learning about, and celebrating birds. See results from past years highlighting the data and trends from the Great Backyard Bird Counts.
Participating is easy, can be done alone or with others, and can be done anywhere you find birds.
Step 1: Decide where you will watch birds.
Step 2: Watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 13–16, 2026.
Step 3: Identify all the birds you see or hear within your planned time/location and use the best tool for sharing your bird sightings:
If you are a beginning bird admirer and new to bird identification, try using the Merlin Bird ID app to tell us what birds you are seeing or hearing. If you have participated in the count before and want to record numbers of birds, try the eBird Mobile app or enter your bird list on the eBird website (desktop/laptop).