National Bird Day is a holiday which has been celebrated for over a decade now. It was set up to fall on January 5th to coincide with the annual Christmas Bird Count. This bird count is one of the longest running citizen science survey’s in the world and helps to keep an eye on the health of the United States’ birds. The Christmas Bird Counts lasts 3 weeks and focuses on native bird populations. On January 5th, the well being of captive birds is honored as well. 

Bird Day, on the other hand, goes back a lot further. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, Bird Day was established by Charles Babcock in 1894. At the time, Mr. Babcock was superintendent of the Oil City, Pennsylvania school district. He started the observation of this holiday throughout the school district as a way to not only celebrate birds but to help educate his students about the importance of birds. While this holiday was meant only for the students of his district, it spread nationwide and by the early 20th century was a well established observational holiday. This is in part due to the book that Mr. Babcock published in 1901 entitled, “Bird Day: How To Prepare For It.”