Blue Heron Bird Club is Back!

Join Green Mountain Conservation Group (GMCG) from November through April for Bird Club as they learn about the wintering birds of the Ossipee Watershed. GMCG’s Blue Heron Bird Club is excited to participate yearly in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch.

Project FeederWatch is a citizen science initiative that challenges people of all ages to observe and record the wintering birds at backyard bird feeders. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology uses this data to monitor trends in bird populations and inform policy to protect birds around the U.S and Canada. Yearly at GMCG’s FeederWatches, they observe cardinals, downy woodpeckers, chickadees, and goldfinches!


Blue Heron Bird Club is hosted by GMCG’s AmeriCorps volunteers and to ensure everyone remains safe and healthy this winter, you are invited participate in Bird Club right from the comfort of your own home. No birding experience is necessary! For novice birders, you can use a simple identification card and guide book to help you determine which birds are at your feeders.

To participate, pick two consecutive days in your week to watch your own bird feeder for one hour each of those days. Green Mountain Conservation Group AmeriCorps members will be watching every other week, but you can participate on your own schedule. Just be sure to leave five consecutive days between your two-day birding sessions.

As you’re watching your feeders, keep track of the birds that stop at your feeder(s) on this data sheet. (https://feederwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/TallySheet.pdf). If you see a group of birds at your feeders, Cornell would like you to only count the largest number of birds of the same species you see together at one time. For example, if you see three downy woodpeckers at your feeder, and then 30 minutes later you see two more, you would only mark the three you saw earlier on your data sheet. and you can find out more detailed info about how the program works here (https://feederwatch.org/about/detailed-instructions/).

When you write down the birds you observe on your tally sheet, go ahead and send the data to water2@gmcg.org and we will do our best to get the data to Cornell to be included in the project! Every session of bird club you participate in matters!
More info on Project FeederWatch CLICK HERE.