Welcome to the Christmas Bird Count!

Welcome to Pasadena Audubon's Christmas Bird Count! If you're helping with the count (affectionately known as the CBC by veteran counters), take pride in the fact that you're part of one of the longest running citizen science projects in history. For the 125th consecutive year, birders all around the world are heading out to record all of the birds they can find in a specific area. Data from Christmas Bird Counts have been a priceless resource to everyone from casual birders to government agencies to scientific researchers.

Here in Pasadena we have an impressive CBC streak going - this is the 79th consecutive year for Pasadena Audubon's Christmas Bird Count!

PAS CBC area
Let's find every bird in this area! (Click on the map for a high-resolution version).

Our 2024 CBC takes place on Saturday, December 14th. We welcome birders of all abilities! It's fun! It's important! It's science! And, just in case you missed it the first time, it's fun!

Join us on Wednesday, December 11th at 7:00 PM at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center for our organizational meeting. (If you miss the meeting but still want to help out with the count, email Jon Fisher and he'll assign you to a count team.

Then, after the count, join us at our traditional Bird Count Dinner Saturday evening, December 14th, from 6 to 8 pm, once again at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. You'll hear about what was seen and what was not and enjoy the company of other Pasadena Audubon birders over a delicious meal.

Tickets for the dinner are available here.

New to doing a Christmas Bird Count? We have a bird walk just for you! Join us on Saturday, December 7 for our CBC Warmup Walk. Sign up here!

Details about this year's Pasadena Audubon Christmas Bird Count

Count Day is from 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM on December 14, 2024. We will count all individual birds detected on that day.

Count Week runs 12:01 AM on December 11 to 11:59 PM on December 17. Any additional species detected during that period, but not on Count Day, will be noted in the summary report for the count.

The count assignments for 2024 are listed in this spreadsheet...

With 177 square miles in our count area, and only a few dozen participants each year, we need your help! We'll have designated areas where you can count birds, either alone or with a team. Or, maybe you'd like to do a feeder watch and count birds visiting your neighborhood. We're very happy to have those counts also. (Please see below for some guidelines.)

To find out if your proposed count location is in our count area, visit https://gis.audubon.org/christmasbirdcount. Zoom in to California and then the Pasadena area to find the Pasadena-San Gabriel Valley count circle.

If you'd like to take part in the Christmas Bird Count at your own feeder, check out these guidelines from PAS president Luke Tiller.

Counting birds for CBC is essentially the same as making a list of birds seen during casual birding. However, to maximize your contribution to CBC, please review these guidelines in advance.

Learn more about the history and science of the Christmas Bird Count at audubon.com.

For any questions about the Pasadena-San Gabriel Valley CBC itself, please contact count coordinator Jon Fisher at JonF60@hotmail.com and/or PAS field trip chair Darren Dowell at dowell.darren@yahoo.com.

For questions about the CBC dinner on the evening of Dec. 14, please contact Jared Nigro at jaredn.pas@gmail.com.