Posted on Sat, Jan. 19, 2008

-- Go ahead, look out into your yard, or your apartment building's green space, the parking lot of your breakfast restaurant, or just look right out your office window. You might even have to leave your building to see the outside world, but chances are if you take just five minutes to look and listen anywhere in South Mississippi, you'll find birds.

I'm talking about feathered dinosaurs, elfin beauties, haunting singers - creatures that fly as easily as we dream. They are right here living among us. Isn't that amazing?

We birdwatchers think so, and there are a lot of us these days. More than one-third of Americans identify themselves as birdwatchers and 65 million of us admit to feeding the beasties. You don't have to wear a pith helmet, buy expensive binoculars, or trek into the wilderness to be a birdwatcher. All you have to do is watch birds or attempt to watch birds.

And you can join the ranks of birdwatchers just in time to take part in one of the most fun and important activities of the year - the Great Backyard Bird Count. A joint venture of the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Count is a yearly effort to create a real-time snapshot of where winter birds are across North America.

This year's Count will take place Feb. 15-18. To participate all you have to do is to watch birds for at least fifteen minutes and count the greatest number of individual birds you see in each species. You can count in as many places as you like, and you can count on each of the four days of the count. You can do this alone, with friends, or even throw a count party. You can just count the birds in your own backyard, or walk around your neighborhood, or go to any number of birdy places to count.

Finally, when the counting is done, the lists need to be input in the GBBC Web site (birdsource.org/) for compilation. How much time and effort you put into this project is up to you.

I hope I have made this process seem fun and simple because it is, but I suspect many of you are thinking of reasons you can't take part.

You might worry about your ability to identify birds. In that case you can team with a more experienced birdwatcher, or you can use the identification resources on the same Web site (birdsource.org/gbbc/learning). You don't have to be able to identify each and every bird to participate. If you get totally stymied on some bird, just report you are not turning in all of the species you saw.

But what if you don't have Internet access?

Don't panic. There will be people from the Mississippi Coast Audubon Society who will help you prepare and upload your list. Everyone can participate in the count, regardless of age, infirmity or hard-headedness.

Now, you might think this is a publicity prank, a lot of fuss and bother that just can't lead to any real science. I used to think exactly that. I enjoyed going to Count parties well enough, enjoyed the company of fellow birdwatchers, and I sure enjoyed the food. But I couldn't see how the Count could give scientists much valuable data that wasn't being collected on the Christmas Bird Count effort.

I was wrong.

The Count has been carefully planned to give scientists a picture of where birds are at the end of winter, just before spring migration starts. The Count also can give a broader view of bird diversity and numbers than the Christmas Bird Count. And, yes, we hope it brings some good publicity for the birds and those who watch them.

So, are you interested in counting birds and having some fun? If you are, please come to the Mississippi Coast Audubon meeting at the Margaret Sherry Memorial Library, 2141 Popp's Ferry Road in Biloxi on Monday night at 6:30. Lin and I will see you there, and we'll talk some more about the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Ronnie Blackwell is a writer and birdwatcher living in Hattiesburg. You can find links to Ron's current novel, "Serve It Cold," and his other writings at RonnieBlackwell.com.