Christmas Bird Count Week – December 14, 2026

Expected Christmas Bird Count Week Deals

As a vital citizen science initiative, Christmas Bird Count Week drives engagement more than commercial deals. The **National Audubon Society** (audubon.org) is the primary organization, encouraging donations and memberships to support their conservation work. Look for local Audubon chapters to host workshops on bird identification and count methodology. Retailers like **Wild Birds Unlimited** often see increased sales of bird feeders, seed, and optics, and may offer special discounts for participants. Companies such as **Bausch + Lomb** and **Vortex Optics** might promote their binoculars and spotting scopes. Conservation-focused brands like **Patagonia** or **REI** may highlight their support for environmental causes, potentially offering gear for outdoor enthusiasts. We will update this page with confirmed live conservation drives and related promotions as December 14 approaches.

History of Christmas Bird Count Week

The Christmas Bird Count Week is celebrated from December 14 to January 5. This celebration is a citizen science survey where volunteer bird watchers in the Northern Hemisphere winter perform a census of the birds in the Western Hemisphere.

The Christmas Bird Count week evolved out of an old hunting tradition in North America. Many North Americans were involved in side hunts over the Christmas period, where they would actively hunt as many birds as they could. This hunting was competitive, which meant that many birds were hunted and killed in the Christmas hunts. Birds of all kinds got killed needlessly during this hunt as the hunters boosted their numbers.

Frank Chapman, an ornithologist, and founder of ‘Bird-Lore’ suggested a change in the tradition. He recommended that instead of hunting birds down and killing them, the Christmas tradition could involve counting them. The first group of observers was very few, about 27 people counted birds that winter. However, they identified about 18,500 individual birds across 90 different species.

The success of the first observers led to the group of bird-watchers increasing every passing year. All the data collected through the Christmas Bird Count Week is used for the sciences, especially conservation biology.

Participation is open to all volunteers, so people do not have to be specifically skilled to count birds during the Christmas Bird Count Week. Every person is assigned a count circle of about 15 miles in diameter, and everyone works in teams of 10 to count the birds in the circle.