Mark your calendars for the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) on February 18-21, 2000! Sponsored by Ford and Wild Birds Unlimited, the GBBC is fun for all ages and provides an excellent community outreach and education tool for chapters. In addition, each year the GBBC is held, its scientific importance increases. National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are partners in the creation of the GBBC.

Count organizers are ready and willing to help your chapter use the GBBC. Here are some suggestions for participation:

1. If your chapter has not yet received an information packet, please contact Matthew McKown at mmckown@audubon.org or 212/979-3083.

2. GBBC press releases will be sent to chapter presidents and newsletter editors periodically between now and February. The releases can be reprinted in chapter newsletters and sent to community newspapers. Add local chapter contacts on the press releases you send and consider calling local reporters as a follow-up. Brief reporters about the count or ask them to write articles about it before and after the event takes place. If you can, provide them with some photos of chapter or community members enjoying their GBBC participation either this year (post-event) or last year - or invite them to attend some of the events for their own photo opportunities. Be sure to inform all media entities about your local efforts to promote and participate in the GBBC.

3. Contact local schools, Audubon Adventure classes, and youth groups about the GBBC; direct them to the Web site at http://www.birdsource.org. Offer to give a brief presentation on submitting data to the count. Consider creating a slide program of the most common birds in your area, and offer to present the show at schools, libraries or community groups (and at your January chapter meeting!).

4. Visit a local Wild Birds Unlimited (WBU) store near you: call 800/326-4WBU for the closest WBU location. These stores are sponsors of the count, and will be participating in this event at a number of different levels from promoting the program to their customers and the media to entering data on-site at their stores. Explore possible collaborative projects with your local store to publicize the event.

5. Set up a count site at an Audubon Center, a sanctuary, or other nature center in your area. Promote the event to visitors; show them how to submit data.

6. Volunteer to submit data for those who do not have access to the Internet. We're eager to include the many retirees who feed and watch the birds in their backyards but do not have computers. These folks could give their lists to computer-connected local chapter members who could enter the data in a minute or two.

7. Visit BirdSource on the Web at http://www.birdsource.org for updated information about the event.