More than 38,000 binocular-wielding, mouse-clicking nature lovers participated in the 1999 Great Backyard Bird Count, sending their results to a very busy web site at the Laboratory of Ornithology and breaking records for online citizen-science events.
By March 1, the deadline for reporting results in the Feb. 19-22 continentwide count, people from Alaska to Florida and Southern California to New Brunswick, Canada, had registered sightings of nearly 2.7 million birds. Participation in the count, now in its second year of operation by the Cornell ornithology lab and the National Audubon Society, more than doubled this year, and 2 1/2 times as many birds were reported.
The web site http://birdsource.tc.cornell.edu/gbbc/ recorded more than 2.5 million visits to its various features, including recorded sounds and natural history information on common birds, instructions for bird feeding and maps that plotted the latest sightings as they arrived at the web site.
Bird-counters without home computers were encouraged to submit results at a local library or a nearby Wildbirds Unlimited store, one of the national sponsors of the event.
The web site also documented most-reported birds and "favorite" birds, and there was some overlap on the lists. The northern cardinal, for example, was the second most-reported as well as the number two favorite bird, while the black-capped chickadee appeared atop the favorites list and in seventh position as most frequently counted. A count of more than 21,700 made the mourning dove the most-sighted bird in the 1999 event.
At least a few birds were reported for each of the 340 species categories in the online checklist. The web site also recorded more than 100 "write-ins" for species that the ornithologists hadn't anticipated.
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