Citizen Science and the Pandemic: A Case Study of the Christmas Bird Count

Citizen science has contributed much to our knowledge of North American birds, with programs like Christmas Bird Count (CBC) providing valuable data on population dynamics, winter distribution, irruption patterns, range expansions, invasion dynamics, community ecology, and the effects of climate change. However, the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020 had the potential to restrict participation and detrimentally impact the scientific value of 2020 count results. CBC data from throughout North America for 2020 were compared to trends from the previous ten years. Participation was reduced in several ways, including number of counts, number of participants, and spatial distribution of counts. However, based on a subset of states and provinces, number of species recorded was not impacted. Care should be taken when using 2020 CBC data for studies requiring fine-scale geographic resolution.