This Saturday, May 9th, celebrate birding by participating in the Global Big Day at a favorite birding site, or a nearby park, refuge, a birding hotspot you've always wanted to visit, or even from home. Join birders from more than 200 nations around the world by spending as much time as you wish to identify and count all the birds you see, then report your observations to eBird online. It's a great occasion to invite family, friends, co-workers, or neighbors to join you. In fact, it's a great opportunity to introduce someone to birding who hasn't been birding before.
You can submit any number of checklists of the birds you see at different sites throughout the day, and everyone can monitor the Big Day website to see what kinds of birds are being reported from near and far, including other countries. You can also view bird photos and listen to bird song recordings on the website – it's truly a special day of birding for everyone.
Information provided by birders during the Global Big Day provides important information about the progress of migration during a peak day worldwide to help biologists better understand global bird populations. You can also share photos you take during your Big Day birding activities. Last year birders shared more than 80,000 photographs of birds (see Media Search - Macaulay Library and eBird), plus more photos that show the birders themselves and photos of the habitats they visited during that marvelous May migration day! Of course, you can download your photos with your eBird report(s) Saturday. You can get all the details at Global Big Day—9 May 2026 - eBird, and you can see the information collected, country by country, continent by continent last year at Global Big Day - eBird