The Friends of the Farm at Hilltop (FOFAH) invites you to participate in the 2017 Great Backyard Bird Count. The 20th annual GBBC is scheduled for Friday, February 17, through Monday, February 20, 2017.
FOFAH challenges birders of all levels of skills and experience to come to Hilltop or go to your own back yard. Simply log on to http://gbbc.birdcount.org. and register. Then tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, February 17-20, 2017. You can count from any location, anywhere in the world!
The Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time. Since 1998, more than 100,000 people of all ages and walks of life have joined the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds.
The 2016 GBBC was epic. An estimated 163,763 bird watchers from more than 130 countries joined in. Participants submitted 162,052 bird checklists reporting 5,689 species–more than half the known bird species in the world and 599 more species than last year!
Suffield photographer and birder, Libby Lord has captured the images of over 35 different birds at Hilltop! You will see her photographs in a poster, The Birds of Hilltop, at the entry kiosk .
Help make this the most successful count ever by participating this year in the Great Backyard Bird Count!