Birders can be a competitive bunch. There's the World Series of Birding, fundraising bird-a-thons and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Project FeederWatch and Great Backyard Bird Count.

The Big Sit, founded in 1993 by the New Haven (Conn.) Bird Club, is an annual, international, noncompetitive birding event coordinated by "Bird Watcher's Digest." This year's event is scheduled for today. Some participants call it a "tailgate party for birders."

The premise of the Oct. 12 Big Sit is simple: Find a place with a good view of a variety of habitats and maybe some feeders. Establish a circle 17 feet in diameter. Then simply count and tabulate all the bird species seen or heard from within the circle for 24 hours.

The Big Sit is like a Big Day or bird-a-thon, but participants are restricted to the designated circle. It's free and open to all individuals and bird clubs, so you can go it alone or host a Big Sit party. The rules are simple and available at www.birdwatchersdigest.com.

Though noncompetitive, the Big Sit offers every circle a chance to win the Golden Bird Award. After all the results are tallied, one bird from the total list is randomly selected. All circles that listed that species are then entered into another random drawing. The winning circle receives $500 (donated by optics company Swarovski Optik) to donate to a nonprofit environmental organization.

Bird clubs, scout groups and other organizations can use the Big Sit as a fundraiser. For example, if each of 10 group members collects a total of $1 per species tallied and the circle tallies 30 species, that's $300 for a special project. Last year, for example, the circle from Mesa, Ariz., raised $1,300 for the Maricopa Audubon Society.

In her final report to "Bird Watcher's Digest," Lisa Chapman of Euclid, Ohio, summed up last year's event: "Thanks to the genius who gave us this reason to chuck chores for a day and spend hours outside on a beautiful fall day!"