this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count, a project of the Audubon Society, and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology.

http://www.birdcount.org/

my mom participated a couple years ago, and then last year she got me to do it, and i'm counting again this year. if you live somewhere that you get feathered visitors, it takes as little as 15 minutes of bird watching to participate.

i've been keeping an eye on the feeders as i catch up with e-mail and whatnot this morning, and so far i've seen:

1 northwestern crow
1 black-eyed junco
2 black-capped chickadees
18 bushtits (they descended on the feeder in a swarm. long-time readers may remember my bushtits post from last winter)

up until a couple weeks ago, i would regularly have a couple dozen sparrows hanging around outside, but they seem to have moved on to a new locale...