Here’s good news for birdwatchers and nature-lovers as it's time for the Christmas Bird Count (CBC), a nationwide tally of birds. The event takes place in December and early January in all cities and many municipal areas.

The event started 115 years ago on Christmas when ornithologist Frank Chapman organized groups of birders to see who could identify, count, and record the most species.

As per experts, conservation of wildlife was not given much importance at that point of time, but slowly scientists and the general public started to notice and worry about declining bird populations.

The CBC emerged as one such step to involve public in conservation of wildlife. Since then CBC has become the longest running citizen science program in the world. It will be not wrong to say that CBC has marked the beginning of modern wildlife conservation.

CBC has been backed by some of the most skilled birders, but the event always welcomes beginners and young enthusiasts. CBC is a greater way for the first-time birders to learn how to identify birds in the field and make real contributions to science.

Data collected during CBC is used in peer-reviewed scientific publications and has been used to link bird population declines to climate change.

Last year a total of 72,653 volunteers participated in 2,248 CBCs and counted a total of 68,753,007 birds. Most of these bird counts took place in the U.S. (1,888) and Canada (460).

The remaining 114 counts took place in Latin America, the Caribbean, Bermuda, and the Pacific Islands. Reports showed that the highest species count came from Ecuador i.e. 529.