You can volunteer to tally all birds seen or heard on a specific day—not just the species but also the number of birds per species. To participate, you must sign up by calling the organizer of your particular area.
The Lehigh Valley Audubon Society is conducting three separate counts:
Allentown. Saturday, December 17. The organizer is Rett Oren. Call 484-985-5685 to participate.
Wild Creek/Little Gap. Sunday, December 18. Organizer: Corey Music. Call 570-269-7509 to participate.
Bethlehem/Easton/Hellertown. Saturday, December 31. Organizers: Don and Elaine Mease. Call 610-346-7754 to participate.
The Christmas Bird Count is organized by the National Audubon Society. Last year more than 76,000 volunteers counted 58.8 million birds, representing 2,607 different species, in 2,505 counts worldwide.
One disturbing finding from last year was the continued decline of the Northern Bobwhite, the only native quail in the eastern United States. Record low numbers of these birds were observed.
Christmas Bird Count volunteers also will be on the lookout for sightings of the Eurasian Collared-Dove, an Old World species that was introduced in the Bahamas in the 1970s and has since spread in great numbers from North Carolina to the Great Lakes.
There is a specific methodology for the Christmas Bird Count. Each count takes place in an established circle that is 15 miles in diameter. Volunteers follow specified routes.
If your home happens to be within one of those 15-mile-wide circles, you can do your counting at home by observing birds that visit your backyard bird feeder or bird bath. To do so, however, you must make arrangements beforehand with the organizer of the count. One other requirement: The count must be made on the date specified. Any sightings reported before or after that date will not be included in the census.
Last year 55 participants in the Allentown count reported 81 different species. Eleven people took part in the Wild Creek/Little Gap count. Even though fewer people were searching, a total of 77 species were seen. The 44 volunteers in the Bethlehem-Easton-Hellertown count recorded 83 species.
Data collected from the Christmas Bird Count, as well as the Breeding Bird Survey in the late spring, has been used to assess the extent and effects of global climate change. For instance, the National Audubon Society forecast that 314 species of North American birds will lose half or more of their current range by 2080. Federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service, have used data from the Christmas Bird Count to evaluate the health of bird populations.
Populations of backyard birds
What does the Christmas Bird Count tell us about some of our favorite backyard birds?
You probably make a mental count of the kinds of birds that come to your backyard feeders or bird baths at this time of year. But did you ever wonder which of these species are most numerous in different parts of the country during this season?
Last year's Christmas Bird Count showed that the community with the greatest number of Northern Cardinals was Ragersville, Ohio, a small town southwest of Canton. That town counted 1,772 cardinals within a 15-mile-wide circle.
Concord, Massachusetts, found 3,118 Black-capped Chickadees within the town's 15-mile circle. Concord also had 751 Downy Woodpeckers, 1,108 White-breasted Nuthatches, 1,965 Tufted Titmice, 2,958 Dark-eyed Juncos and 1,692 American Goldfinches—the most numerous of any of these species reported in the United States. What a busy place Concord must be!
The highest number of backyard species were recorded in these locales:
- Mourning Dove, 8,966 in Phoenix, Arizona
- Ruby-throated Hummingbird, 84 in Kendall, Florida
- American Crow, 74,000 in Illinois' Middle Fork River Valley
- Red-breasted Nuthatch, 395 in Anchorage, Alaska
- Eastern Bluebird, 727 in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia
- American Robin, 46,801 in Mizpah, New Jersey, which is located between Vineland and Mays Landing
- Gray Catbird, 1,100 on Long Pine Key, Florida
- Northern Mockingbird, 575 in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas (northeast of Corpus Christi)
- House Wren, 243 in Matagorda County, Texas (midway between Corpus Christi and Houston)
- Chipping Sparrow, 3,169 in Atascosa Highlands in Arizona
- White-throated Sparrow, 4,281 in Fort Belvoir, Virginia
- White-crowned Sparrow, 5,066 in Stockton, California
- Song Sparrow, 1,630 in Sequim-Dungeness in northwest Washington
- Baltimore Oriole, 60 in Gainesville, Florida
- House Finch, 3,636 in Tucson Valley, Arizona
- Purple Finch, 945 in in Petersburg, New Hampshire
- Pine Siskin, 2,304 in Saranac Lake, New York
- House Sparrow, 4,270 in Davenport, Iowa
If you are one of the many backyard birders who dislike European Starlings, thank your lucky stars that you aren't living in Rio Cosumnes, a small town south of Sacramento, California. Volunteers there found 393,630 starlings in the single day of the Christmas Bird Count!
Closer to home, western Chester County in Pennsylvania reported 638,731 Common Grackles.
Brown-headed Cowbirds must have made Pine Prairie, Louisiana, their winter vacation home. Last year, the town's Christmas Bird Count estimated a population of more than 1 million of these birds (so many cowbirds that hand-counting proved impossible).
One note of local significance: Upper Bucks County reported 136 Eastern Screech-Owls.
The Christmas Bird Count is a lot of fun. You'll never know what you might see on that day!
No comments:
Post a Comment