Birds Can Count On Being Watched
This year, more than 44,000 people from Alaska to Argentina will celebrate the holidays by wandering around in circles.
Circles 15 miles in diameter, to be exact.
It’s the National Audubon Society’s 96th Christmas Bird Count, which started Dec. 16 and runs through Jan. 2. The idea is to pick one day, go to the assigned circle, which covers 177 square miles, and spend as much time as possible counting birds.
The society expects 1,700 individual counts.
“Each Christmas bird counter is doing more than peering at birds through binoculars - they’re involved in a unique exercise in citizen science,” said Susan Drennan, an Audubon vice president.
“By counting bird species, each participant is helping to build an important database of irreplaceable scientific information about the health of bird populations and the quality of their habitats.”
Bird counts have helped document the decline and expansion of many species, including neotropical songbirds, which summers in North America and winters in the tropics or South America, and the decline of the American black duck.
The Christmas Bird Count originated as a protest to holiday hunts in which teams competed to see which could shoot the most animals in a day. In 1900, 27 conservationists decided to protest the shoot by counting birds rather than shooting them.
While such hunts are gone, “pollution, population pressures, climate change and habitat loss, especially loss of wetlands and forests, are the most damaging threats to wildlife,” Drennan said.
“Of all wildlife species, birds are among the first to show the effects of problems in our environment.”
xxxx TAKING COUNT The Spokane Christmas bird count will be conducted Dec. 30. Novice counters are welcome. Info: (509) 299-3780.