Brant Geese, a popular sighting along the Atlantic coast during the winter bird count.
Photo by Phil Eager.

It’s just about time for the annual Christmas Bird Count organized by the National Audubon Society, a major event on the birding calendar, and one that I particularly look forward to each year. The count period this year runs from December 14 to January 5, and the concept is as simple as its name: counting birds during the holiday season. As the journal Nature wrote last year, the Christmas Bird Count has become the model for effective citizen science projects , and may be the longest-running such project in the world. It's also a fun social event, which allows you to make new friends and to see people you don't see all year.

We now look on the Christmas Bird Count as a good excuse to go birding in the winter and to take a break from all of the holiday craziness, but its origins are rooted in conservation. The first Christmas Bird Count was organized in 1900 by Frank Chapman and the young National Audubon Society as a kinder and gentler answer to the Christmas "side hunt,” a gruesome holiday tradition in which groups would compete to shoot the most birds in a given day.

Thankfully, the Christmas Bird Count seems to have won out over the s “side hunts.” That first Christmas Bird Count had 27 participants, in 25 areas, who counted 18,500 individual birds (of 90 different species). In 2008, there were more than 2,100 counts which counted an aggregate of 65 million birds. The report for 2008 isn’t on-line yet, but you can take a look at the report for the prior year to get a sense for how big this has become. There was even one count last year in Antarctica which included, among other things, 250,000 Adelie Penguins and two Emperor Penguins! 

Each local Christmas Bird Count is organized in a 15 mile diameter circle. Depending on the habitat to be covered, and how many volunteers there are, that circle is often subdivided into a number of areas, whose numbers then feed into the circle's overall count. For example, the “circle” for the Point Reyes Peninsula count that we do each year has been divided into 30 areas, given the rich diversity of the area and the large number of volunteer counters.

One of the key aspects of the Christmas Bird Counts is that volunteers are counting not just how many species they see in their particular area, but the number of individual birds – the idea is to count each bird seen or heard that day. It requires more record-keeping than many birders normally do for a day out in the field, and while the numbers might not be precise, in the aggregate they provide lots of important trend data, and can also help highlight bird populations that might be in trouble (or recovering).

At the end of many counts, there’s a compilation dinner, at which the numbers are added up and all of the volunteers in that circle get to see how many species were seen, and what rarities or oddities were found. Oftentimes, rarities are found on the count day because of the sheer number of people out in the field looking for, and counting, the birds, so many people at the dinners will take notes to decide what birds to “chase” the next day (assuming they’re not doing another count in another area).

There's also a friendly rivalry between counts to see who has the most participants and which one has the most different species of birds. A count in Southern California or Texas usually wins one or both of those honors. The Point Reyes Peninsula count that we do each year averages well over 200 participants and 200 species a year -- not too shabby. But friends of ours do the Denali count in Alaska each year, and they described it to us as perfectly fine day of gathering for breakfast, going out for the few hours of sunlight to count the Common Ravens, and then returning for dinner.

So, a Christmas Bird Count is fun whether you’re counting sparrows or wintering ducks in Central Park, ravens in Alaska, or penguins in Antarctica. And, best of all, you don't need to be an expert to participate. Birders of all levels of experience and skill are welcomed, and needed in order to make sure all of the areas are covered. Don’t worry if you're unsure of your skill level (or maybe you've never birded in the particular area to which you've been assigned) because your area leader will team you up with other birders who are more familiar with the birds and the area. And you can also help keep the notes on the number of birds of each species that are seen by your group. You'll be contributing to an important citizen science effort, and you'll also learn a lot in the process.

If you haven’t seen anything in your local paper or Audubon newsletter yet about the counts in your area, check out Audubon’s database of count circles. There’s a web site listing the various counts in California, and there are probably similar sites for other states.

Happy counting! Be sure to let us know what counts you participate in, and what fun things you find.

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Birding Phil started birding in Cape May, N.J. and Central Park in New York City more than 10 years ago. Since then, his birding adventures (with his wife, Mimi Calter) have included trips to Alaska, Belize, and mainland Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, along with a bunch of other hotspots in the continental U.S., including Florida, Texas, and Arizona). Phil was included in Chris Santella's book "Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations," in which Phil talked about Pt. Reyes, CA. Birdwatchers -- head on over and join the Birdwatchers group on Trails.