Hi All,

I don't usually get many takers for this, but today is the first day of The Great Backyard Bird Count! To participate all you have to do is agree to watch for birds for at least 15 minutes on one or more of today, Saturday, Sunday, and/or Monday. You can do it out of your window--or anywhere else you want to! Then you click on the Submit Your Checklists link on the above site and tell them what you saw, where! They really do make it easy, and it helps them track how well the birds in North America are doing from year to year. If you don't really know what you're looking at when you see birds, you can click on the Regional Bird List link and enter your zip code and it'll give you a list of the birds you're most likely to see in your area--which can be really helpful to narrow down the list if you're trying to figure out what something is, and if you don't have a Bird Book, you can go to The Cornell Lab of Ornithology search page to look up pics to figure out what you're looking at.

As of RIGHT NOW, 2,537 Checklists have already been submitted, 354 Species have been observed, and 172,637 Individual Birds have been counted this year! There's a running tally on the right side of the page.

I'm having a better Bird Day today than I have recently! So far I've seen two chickadees--which I rarely see at this house, two flickers, a dark-eyed, slate-colored junco--which I've had a real dearth of lately, male and female downy woodpeckers, and my usual plethora of house finches. Haven't found anywhere on the checklist for Squirrelus obnoxiousii, so I guess they don't count!

If anybody wants to look at some pretty bird pictures, here's a link to the Cornell Lab eNews newsletter I get. See if you can figure out what the pretty little bird is that can survive temperatures of -65 degrees! I couldn't! Even here, at temps MUCH warmer than that, I always wonder why tiny little Birdie Feet don't freeze!

Hope a couple of you will join me in The Count,

Skybird (There's no place on the checklist for "that" kind of a bird either!)