The Numbers Are In From The 2019 Great Backyard Bird Count!

Posted by Myra Per-Lee on March 21, 2019

Red-Winged Blackbird, Male, By Walter Siegmund

The Red-Winged Blackbird was the most reported bird sighted in the 2019 Great Backyard Bird Count, Photo By Walter Siegmund (via)

Numbers have been tabulated from February's 2019 Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), and the count of participating countries, humans, and birds went up!

Bird-counting is ecologically necessary. The Cornell Lab, whose mission it is to "interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds" needs to answer these questions answered every year:

• How will the weather and climate change influence bird populations?

• Some birds, such as winter finches, appear in large numbers during some years but not others. Where are these species from year to year, and what can we learn from these patterns?

• How will the timing of birds’ migrations compare with past years?

• How are bird diseases, such as West Nile virus, affecting birds in different regions?

• What kinds of differences in bird diversity are apparent in cities versus suburban, rural, and natural areas?

Snow geese in flight By Cephas

Snow Geese in Flight, By Cephas via

Obviously, bird-counters from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society cannot be in every neighborhood at counting times, so in 1998 the two organizations launched the Great Backyard Bird Count as the first online citizen-science project to count the birds during the same period of time - 4 days - throughout the U.S.

Then, in 2013, the GBBC went international and, though most of the bird counting still comes from the U.S., year by year more citizens from other countries join in, so the data collectors get an idea of influxes and exoduses of birds throughout the world.

Now, in 2019, the GBBC has had the greatest participation ever and more birds counted than ever! The U.S. is still the top contributor by far, but other countries like India, Canada Australia, Spain, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Taiwan, and Colombia follow.

As for the numbers of individual birds recorded, take a look at these tabulated by the GBBC on March 6, 2019. I don't see any of these in my backyard!

Species	Number of Individuals
Red-winged Blackbird	4,290,218
Snow Goose	2,481,082
European Starling	2,031,493
Canada Goose	1,716,620
Common Murre	755,193
Ring-billed Gull	748,766
Mallard	720,105
American Robin	491,102
American Coot	448,816
Northern Shoveler	446,105

But the most reported species reflect the predominance of U.S. participants. (I'm surprised the most prevalent bird isn't the American Crow, but maybe it just seems that way!)

Northern Cardinal by Hari Krishnan

Male Northern Cardinal by Hari Krishnan via

Species	Number of Checklists
Northern Cardinal	56,785
Dark-eyed Junco	50,397
Mourning Dove	45,449
Downy Woodpecker	42,095
Blue Jay	40,386
American Crow	39,467
House Finch	37,726
House Sparrow	37,149
Black-capped Chickadee	35,757
White-breasted Nuthatch	33,284

You might be interested in knowing which countries reported the most number of species in 2019. The stars next to the numbers represent a new record set by the country for species recorded.

Country	Number of Species
Colombia	1,095*
Ecuador	948*
Brazil	844*
India	843*
Mexico	755
Peru	724*
Costa Rica	686*
United States	669*
Argentina	613*
Thailand	556

Good to know the U.S. is somewhere on this list! By the way, California residents were the highest to report in the States, followed by Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

There's so much more information you can learn from the 2019 GBBC here, but if you have 2-3 minutes, you should watch this beautiful video which tells us all why bird information is so important.