A partridge in a pear tree? Seven swans a-swimming? Around here? Probably not in December. A crow in a cornfield or a finch on a fence is more likely. But you won’t know until you and your binoculars get out there and start looking, will you? The National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count is the perfect opportunity to spread your citizen-scientist wings and maybe astound the birding world with what you see.

I always thought the CBC was a one-day event—maybe Christmas afternoon you wander around outside for a while, notice the cardinals and juncos at the bird feeder, then head back inside to drink more eggnog. Nope. I probably had it confused with the Great Backyard Bird Count, which takes place on President’s Day weekend (and may or may not involve eggnog). This year the CBC, now in its 126th incarnation, runs from December 14 through January 5. It’s way more organized than I ever realized, which makes good sense if you want the collected data to be useful.

Back around the turn of the last century, some folks in North America participated in a Christmas competition known as side hunts, a holdover from Victorian England and the continental aristocracy. There were sides—maybe geographic or familial—and participants shot as many birds and other living things as they could, with the goal of seeing which side could kill the most. Lovely, right? (Check out fieldethos.com/christmas-side-hunts/ for a quick overview.) Ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early-on member of the fledgling Audubon Society, had a better idea: Let’s see how many birds we can count instead of how many we can kill. The first CBC was on Christmas Day, 1900, and included twenty-seven counters counting birds in over twenty-five different places from Toronto to California.

Today there are thousands of people counting birds in thousands of locations in over twenty countries in the Western Hemisphere. My friend Kathy Riley, a member of the Tiadaghton Audubon Society here in Tioga County (tiadaghtonaudubon.blogspot.com) and a dedicated birder for fifty-plus years, explains that each count takes place in an established fifteen-mile-diameter circle. Some areas have lots of circles and lots of participants, others not so many (check out the CBC circle map at audubon.org). Depending on where you are (or where you might be willing to go), you’ll be assigned a circle. Kathy says it works best for at least two people to work together—one can drive and one can list the birds seen. Binos are helpful, as is a notebook and the field guide of your choice. The Sibley Field Guide and the Peterson Field Guide to Birds are popular. Your end-of-the-day results are given to the count compiler who is in charge of your circle, with those numbers eventually going to the National Audubon Society.

The best way to get started with the CBC is via the Audubon website or your local Audubon Society chapter. In addition to the TAS, check out lycomingaudubon.org, sevenmountainsaudubon.org, and cvaudubon.org. If the CBC whets your appetite for birding, you can get the free eBird app by Cornell Lab. It helps you identify what you’re seeing and contribute your information and sightings to a worldwide database.