Want some inspiration to your 2025 resolutions? We’ve bought you coated. Audubon has designed a collection of month-to-month targets to maintain your birding feeling contemporary all yr lengthy. Sustain with these challenges to sharpen your expertise as a birder, deepen your relationship with nature, and develop as an avian advocate within the new yr.
(For a printable model of this calendar, click here!)
January: Get Chicken Prepared
Kick off 2025 with some bird-friendly housekeeping. Begin by adding decals or screens to your home windows to stop strikes. Bought a feeder? Clear it out. Bought a yard? Stack branches to build a brush pile.
February: Hear Up
Use the winter quiet to be taught songs and calls of year-round residents. Your native robins and finches deserve some love, too—and realizing their sounds will show you how to discover when guests add their voices. Then, apply your neighborly information to the Great Backyard Bird Count, which occurs mid-month.
March: Seed Native Progress 
Native vegetation present nectar, berries, seeds, and bugs that gas birds all year long. To assist your native meals internet, use Audubon’s Native Plants Database to prep for spring planting, or volunteer at a close-by park to drag up invasives.
April: Be a Patch Professional
Patch birding, or returning to the identical spot time and again, can supply wealthy rewards. Go deep by selecting a patch close to you and birding it each week this month.
- Week one: Stroll round your patch. Draw a map of its options.
- Week two: Settle in for a fowl sit. Spend quarter-hour in a single spot and deeply interact your senses.
- Week three: Go to at a brand new time of day. What variations do you discover in fowl conduct?
- Week 4: Replicate on how your patch has modified since your first go to. Hold coming again all year long to identify seasonal shifts.
Might: Put Feminine Birds First
Male birds, with their often-flashier plumage, are inclined to get the highlight. However overlooking females makes for biased birding and has real impacts for conservation. Dedicate a day to search for solely feminine birds. Noting delicate markings and conduct might help nail these trickier IDs—and make you a sharper birder.
June: Peep Household Antics
Now’s the time to spy on new fowl households (from a respectful distance). To find a nest, verify birds’ beaks for deliveries: Some will likely be carrying nesting materials, shuttling meals to their younger, or clearing out the fecal sacs that function diapers for child birds. Attempt to spot a juvenile trying somewhat fluffy or oddly proportioned.
July: Share the Shore
Heading to a seashore? Ensure that to leave room for shorebirds, whose sandy nests and waterfront foraging are sometimes disturbed by human exercise. Volunteer with one in all Audubon’s Coastal Bird Stewardship Programs, or begin your personal, to unfold the phrase.
August: Indulge in Molt Insanity
Discover a scraggly, patchy fowl going by the awkward—however necessary!—strategy of refreshing its feathers. Waterfowl and enormous birds in flight could be good targets to identify feather gaps. (Simply make sure not to judge.)
September: Refresh Your Fall
As migration will get underway, problem your self to attempt one thing new. Craft your private birding targets utilizing the prompts beneath, then verify again in on the finish of the month to see how you probably did.
- What’s one new species I wish to search for?
- Who’s one new particular person I wish to fowl with?
- The place is one new location I wish to discover?
- What’s one new birding method I wish to attempt?
October: Hit a Hawk Watch
Take within the majesty of raptors hovering by fall migration. Discover a watch close to you at hawkcount.org, and regulate silhouettes and flight patterns to sharpen your long-distance IDs.
November: Apply the Artwork of Commentary
Attempt your hand at sketching birds in the field. Begin by capturing total posture and form, then take your time to fill in feather groupings and key particulars. Irrespective of your degree of creative talent, the follow might help you observe birdlife with contemporary eyes.
December: Enhance Science
Every year, the Christmas Chicken Depend creates a world snapshot of avian populations that gives essential perception for researchers. Discover a depend close to you at audubon.org/cbc so as to add your native birdlife to that image, and verify zooniverse.org for extra methods to assist scientists from the consolation of house.
This piece initially ran within the Winter 2024 concern as “A Yr of Avian Motion.” To obtain our print journal, grow to be a member by making a donation today.
