Even the novices can participate. They can identify the birds in their area with the help of smartphones and enter the number of birds they see and the details of the species into an app. Birdwatchers and nature lovers will be identifying birds and enumerating them all over the world on Saturday as part of the second annual October Big Day and international bird-counting survey.
The Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab, which has a massive eBird database, will help in counting and identifying birds seen on the day.
The Cornell Labs started with organising the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), but saw that a second season count was needed to gather data about shifts in migration and species at risk.
Those with smartphones can download eBird and Merlin Bird ID apps to easily identify the birds and enumerate them.
Signing in is free into the eBird website (for those not using smartphones) and participants need to enter the number of birds sighted in 24 hours until 11.59 p.m. midnight October 19, the time zone notwithstanding. The data entry should be done in sessions of at least 10 minutes each. The sighting could be recorded in a notebook or a voice recorder, example “two crows on the neem tree in front of the apartment block”.
Taking a picture of the bird with the smartphone makes the process much easier. The birdwatcher can identify the bird at leisure at home if it is a student in the classroom.
India stood fourth in the first Big October Day and Andhra Pradesh stood fifth in the country in the number of checklists and species identified according to eBird app.
