Want some inspiration in your 2025 resolutions? We’ve bought you lined. 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 Chook Prepared
Kick off 2025 with some bird-friendly housekeeping. Begin by adding decals or screens to your home windows to forestall 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 learn songs and calls of year-round residents. Your native robins and finches deserve some love, too—and realizing their sounds will make it easier to discover when guests add their voices. Then, apply your neighborly data to the Great Backyard Bird Count, which occurs mid-month.
March: Seed Native Development 
Native vegetation present nectar, berries, seeds, and bugs that gas birds all year long. To help your native meals net, use Audubon’s Native Plants Database to prep for spring planting, or volunteer at a close-by park to tug up invasives.
April: Be a Patch Professional
Patch birding, or returning to the identical, particular spot again and again, can provide 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: Mirror on how your patch has modified since your first go to. Preserve coming again all year long to identify seasonal shifts.
Might: Put Feminine Birds First
Male birds, with their often-flashier plumage, are likely 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 refined markings and conduct may also 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, test birds’ beaks for deliveries: Some shall 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 slightly fluffy or oddly proportioned.
July: Share the Shore
Heading to a seaside? Be certain that to leave room for shorebirds, whose sandy nests and waterfront foraging are sometimes disturbed by human exercise. Volunteer with one in every of Audubon’s Coastal Bird Stewardship Programs, or begin your individual, to unfold the phrase.
August: Take pleasure in Molt Insanity
Boost your birding skills by discovering a scraggly, patchy fowl going by way of the awkward—however vital!—technique of refreshing its feathers. Molting waterfowl and huge birds in flight could be good targets for recognizing telltale 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 test 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 strategy I wish to attempt?
October: Hit a Hawk Watch
Take within the majesty of raptors hovering by way of fall migration. Discover a watch close to you at hawkcount.org, and regulate silhouettes and flight patterns to sharpen your long-distance IDs.
November: Follow the Artwork of Remark
Strive 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 stage of inventive talent, the observe may also help you observe birdlife with contemporary eyes.
December: Increase Science
Annually, the Christmas Chook Rely creates a worldwide 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 test zooniverse.org for extra methods to assist scientists from the consolation of house.
This piece initially ran within the Winter 2024 subject as “A Yr of Avian Motion.” To obtain our print journal, turn out to be a member by making a donation today.
