Grab your binoculars and come birding!

The Christmas Bird Count for Kids (CBC4Kids) is a fun, family-friendly – and free – bird watching event that builds bird identification skills and contributes to important citizen science for bird conservation. For many families, this might the first foray into really looking at birds and with a new-found knowledge of identifying a handful of common species, this opens up a wonderful new world of nature discovery.

Any organization or club can get involved and the events are usually led by experienced birding experts who show participants how to identify local birdlife and use binoculars, then lead them outside to find and count birds. Once the survey is over, families and their birding mentors share their observations and the findings are submitted to eBird, which is the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science database.

To get involved, visit Bird Studies Canada’s website and find out how your club, school or organization can get involved. Your local BC Nature naturalist club might have a volunteer who can help out as a nature mentor.

Thanks to our supporters, Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, TD Friends of the Environment and Nature Canada’s NatureHood Program for supporting NatureKids BC’s participation in the Christmas Bird Count for Kids initiative.

Image credit: L. Bol