LIMA — The Tri-Moraine Audubon Society has announced that the Great Backyard Bird Count will be Feb. 12-15.

Participants are asked to count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the four-day event and report their sightings online at birdcount.org. Birds can be counted in backyards or anywhere else in the world.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society use the submitted checklists to learn more about how birds are doing and how to protect them and the environment. Last year, more than 140,000 participants submitted their bird observations online, creating the largest instantaneous snapshot of global bird populations ever recorded.