Hey all you citizen scientists. Time to get outside and help the professionals figure out just what’s going on in the bird world!

That’s right. It’s time for the 13th annual Great Backyard Bird Count.

For four days every February, thousands of citizen scientists fan out across North America and count birds. Doesn’t take hours. In fact, just 15 minutes 0f counting birds will help.

It can be an individual count in the backyard. Or a family activity on a nature walk. Or a classroom event with students and their teachers.

Ken Pals, retired supervisor of the Fountain Creek Nature Center, has been counting birds for the project for years. And he will participate this year. Here’s a look at Ken, in the green jacket, on a recent hawk field trip.

 

Ken said there’s a wide variety of birds that you can see in the Colorado Springs region. He’s recently seen a winter wren, a black-capped chickadee, an American robin, a red-winged blackbird as well as magpies, dark-eyed juncos and pine siskins.

Heres a few photos of birds he has seen on recent outings: an American goldfinch, left, and a Western bluebird.

  

    

 

This guy as a Northern flicker. 

 At the Great Backyard Bird Count Web site, you can dig into data going back to 1998. For example, there is a page on Colorado and even a breakdown of what was reported from Colorado Springs. Here’s a link to the Citizen Scientist reports from out area last year.

In my backyard in Rockrimmon, we get a variety of birds including this Northern Goshawk that chose a tree in our backyard to rest one morning.

We also get Stellar’s Jays like this one:

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We also see Blue Jays like this little corn thief:

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