The count is done — and it set records.

The ninth annual Great Backyard Bird Count from Feb. 17-20 set new records as participation soared across the United States and Canada. From backyards to wildlife refuges, bird watchers tallied a record-breaking 623 bird species and 7.5 million individual birds in the event coordinated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. Participants sent in more than 60,000 checklists, providing a wealth of information unmatched in previous years.

The flood of reports yielded what would have been otherwise impossible — a comprehensive snapshot of the continent’s bird life.

“With more people watching birds, together we discovered amazing things,” said Paul Green, director of Citizen Science for National Audubon Society. “In some places, observers described flocks of robins so large their combined calls were louder than jetliners, and good seed crops in northwest Canada caused several species of seedeaters to remain in sub-zero northern Canada rather than move to warmer areas further south.”

American robins are typically reported in greatest number by observers in the balmy Southern states, but they inundated the Northwest this year, including Washington state, where flocks of 40,000 or more were seen and totals skyrocketed to 96 percent above last year’s count.

In contrast, tallies of robins were down to less than half of their 2005 numbers in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi for reasons that are as yet unclear.

Complete tallies and maps are available at the Great Backyard Bird Count web site www.birdsource.org/gbbc, along with photos and narratives about other birds — including species in Southern states hit by hurricanes, the stunning invasion of snowy owls in the Pacific Northwest, migratory pathways of sandhill cranes, regional rarities such as a black-throated blue warbler in Connecticut, and continued drops in counts of American crows, which have been plagued by West Nile virus.

For the birds