Shillong, Feb 10: As the global Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) returns between February 13 to 16, 2026, campuses across India are gearing up for the Campus Bird Count, a sister event of GBBC, unique to India organised by Bird Count India in collaboration with WWF India and Foundation for Ecological Security (FES).
Building on last year’s remarkable engagement, when more than 270 campuses uploaded over 8,000 bird lists, campus communities nationwide are once again taking the lead in documenting birds.
From engineering colleges in Pune to architecture programmes in Kerala, from schools in Chhattisgarh to garden campuses in Delhi, from universities in Mizoram to sprawling campuses in Gujarat, thousands of students, faculty, and staff are monitoring birds in green spaces. Some of these are informal patches—courtyards, heritage groves, and tree-lined pathways—that have emerged as vital habitats beyond protected areas, often the last strongholds of biodiversity in India’s increasingly built-up cities and towns.
“Taking part in this event inspired me and my fellow students to think about birds, notice them, and even rescue injured ones. It also showed us how documenting the birds on eBird can convert our interest into important information that helps the birdwatching community and scientists in India.”- Says Siddharth Singh Bawa, a student from Class 11 from The Doon School, Dehradun.
