Birders from around the world will participate in the October Big Day this Saturday, October 11th, hoping to collectively report more than 8,000 species of birds in a single day (Turquoise Jay photographed by Clark Johnson in Ecuador). Closer to home, some Eastern birders should find a Wood Thrush among the birds they see and hear (photo by Chris Miller in New York). The October Big Day logo features a Vermillion Tanager photographed by Ben Lucking.

Get excited for October Big Day, a global event coming up this Saturday – Hooray! Join thousands of other enthusiastic birders October 11th to contribute a bit of time and your birding enthusiasm to help make this the best day of birding during fall migration. All it takes is a few minutes of your time, or a few hours if you prefer: Do your thing, identify and count all the birds you see and hear Saturday and report your list of birds on eBird. Your info will contribute to a collective overview of the distribution of bird species in North America during mid-fall migration, along with birds found worldwide by birders in more than 200 nations.

Last year, October Big Day birders joined to form a birding team that spanned more than 200 nations to participate in this global celebration of birds and birding! Each birder reported the birds observed, and collectively we recorded a new record number of 7,994 different species of birds in one day! This fall we should collectively break the 8,000 species mark during this special day of birding – Saturday, October 11th.

Established by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, eBird is the global platform for sharing bird observations, and everyone’s contributions are compiled into a single massive October Big Day list, which provides helpful information for biologists to better understand birds during this period of the year.

Before October 11th, you can refer to the results of last year’s October Big Day to see an interesting synopsis of how the information is tallied by geographic regions including national species totals at October Big Day page. On Saturday and thereafter you can watch the results roll in from across the nation and around the world in real-time beginning at 12am local time October 11th at the same webpage. This is also the prime website to report your Big Day results, so it’s definitely October Big Day central. Have a great day this Saturday, and every day this October!