Each year, Greenwich Audubon Center participates in this annual tradition to monitor winter bird populations throughout the United States and Canada. Teams of birders head out on a predetermined date in December to count as many individual birds as possible in our count area in a 24-hour period. Our count area is known as the "Greenwich-Stamford Count Circle."

This year's Greenwich-Stamford Christmas Bird Count will be held on Sunday, December 17th 2023.

For more information, to join an organized Greenwich CBC team, or to confirm of your home or counting site is within the Greenwich-Stamford 15-mile wide count circle, contact count compiler Cynthia Ehlinger at 203-219-1963 or email at cynthia.ehlinger@gmail.com.

About the Christmas Bird Count

The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is the longest-running Community Science project in the world. Started in 1899 as a way of encouraging people to count birds instead of shooting them, the CBC takes place each year from mid-December to early January when thousands of volunteer birders contribute to the long-term study of early winter bird populations across North America. Count captains in each local area coordinate volunteers for their respective "count circles," and count birds (both number of species and number of individuals) throughout a 24-hour period.

CBC participants range from expert ornithologists to beginning birders, following established protocols to ensure consistent data collection. The data from each count circle is tabulated and submitted to the National Audubon Society, to be used by scientists in a wide variety of studies. To date, more than 200 peer-reviewed articles have resulted from analysis done with Christmas Bird Count data, which has also been used by U.S. Federal agencies as an important basis for making decisions about birds.

Select here to learn more about the Audubon Christmas Bird Count

Photo: Camilla Cerea / CBC 2015