Public bird count starts again with the involvement of the public

(Photo: Pixabay)

The campaign will run from December 6 to February 28, 2026. The aim of the count, which has been extended by almost a month, is to involve the public in observing the birds living in our environment and in collecting “citizen science” data that also helps protect them, the MME told MTI on Monday. As they wrote, anyone can participate in the count, supported by a smartphone application and online resources, without prior natural science training. All you need to upload the data is a mobile phone or a notebook. The data collected in this way will also contribute to monitoring the effects of climate change on the development of Hungary’s winter bird population in the coming decades. The first such public data collection in our country, targeting bird feeders and their surroundings, took place in the winter of 2022/2023. In the first count, 825 informants observed 85,750 individuals of 121 species at 1,410 observation sites; in the winter of 2024/2025, 1,115 people participated in the campaign and reported 208,145 individuals of 121 species from 1,276 observation sites. The Turdus application, developed by MME and available on Android and iOS phones and tablets, makes it easier to submit data, but for those who do not use smartphones, observations can also be recorded in an online database. An additional advantage of this is that four types of immediately available, date-filtered statistical summaries can be retrieved, which are available to anyone.

MTI