Each year Bighorn Audubon Society participates in the World Migratory Bird Day Spring Bird Count, created in 1993 at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The count is similar to Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count but is conducted on one day each year: the second Saturday in May in the U.S. and Canada, and in October in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. The goal of the Count is to get a snapshot of the movement of Neotropical migratory birds – a bird that spends the summer in its breeding range in North America but migrates to Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean for its nonbreeding range in winter. It is the only international education program that focuses on the migration of nearly 350 species of migratory birds between nesting habitats in North America and non-breeding grounds in Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
When combined with other surveys, such as the Breeding Bird Survey, this survey provides a picture of how the continent’s bird populations have changed in time and space over the past hundred years. Data are combined within a large pool in order to evaluate continental changes in bird populations. Locally, the one-day count data are sent to the non-game division of Wyoming Game and Fish in Lander to aid in the understanding of local bird populations and their changes.