Our Inaugural Winter Bird Count

In a previous post, I described how I used primary sources and picture books to introduce my second-grade students to the history of the Christmas Bird Count, the longest-running citizen science project in the world. Today, I'm finally sharing how this primary source analysis led to our own inaugural Winter Bird Count.

Student illustration of a Carolina Wren, one of the species we observed during our Winter Bird Count.

January 13, 2026 was the inaugural CSG Winter Bird Count at Cynthia's Woods, our 100-acre outdoor campus. My second-grade students, along with several other teachers and adults, spent about 45 minutes surveying different areas of the property. Students used binoculars, the Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and a teacher-created checklist to document their observations. We gathered as a large group at the end to tally our data and celebrate with hot chocolate. In all, we identified fifteen species by sight or song, many of which students had predicted we'd see.

Looking for birds.

Tracking data.

Back at school, students created a bulletin board display detailing what they’d learned about the historical Christmas Bird Count as well as our own. Every student contributed in some way to the display, including written paragraphs, a bar graph, and illustrations of our count and the bird species we observed. Student work also appeared in our school's scientific journal, Sisters in STEM.

Students collaborated to create this bulletin board about our count.

The inaugural CSG Winter Bird Count was a great success, and I look forward to continuing it in the years to come!