Officials with the Cass County Conservation Board say the annual Great Backyard Bird Count will get underway in about two weeks. The event is hosted by The National Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Canadian partner Bird Studies Canada. The results provide a snapshot of the whereabouts of more than 600 bird species. 

Anyone can participate in the free event and no registration is needed. All you need to do is watch and count birds for at least 15 minutes on any day of the count, from February 17th through the 20th, 2012. Enter your results at www.birdcount.org, where you can watch as the tallies grow across the continent. The four-day count typically records more than 10 million observations.