Birdwatching event is something to count on
Tiz the season to be homing in on birds for the holidays.
Expert birdwatchers in the Inland Northwest and across North and South America are inviting casual observers to join them in the field for the 106th annual Christmas Bird Count.
It’s the birdwatching social event of the season, set on different days in different localities so birders can get involved with more than one group.
Dozens of groups are being organized in the Inland Northwest alone. Each group counts for one day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 in a designated circle 15 miles in diameter.
The count began on Christmas 1900, when 27 conservationists in 25 eastern localities posed an alternative to the “side hunt,” a traditional Christmas activity in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small mammals.
Instead, these birders publicized the pleasure of identifying, counting and recording all the birds they saw, founding what is now considered to be one of the world’s broadest-based citizen conservation efforts.
Apart from its main attraction as a social and competitive event, the databases generated by on-line reporting have boosted the Christmas count’s value in generating a “snapshot” and monitoring the long-term status of resident and migratory birds across the Western Hemisphere, National Audubon officers say.
The data reported by volunteers are combined with more scientific survey methods to help ornithologists study myriad issues, such as the magnitude of West Nile virus.
The 2004 count set numerous records. Reports came in from 2,022 circles, exceeding the previous record of 1,996 circles covered in 2003.
More than 69.9 million birds were recorded by 56,623 birders participating in the counts, including 1,278 observers in the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific Islands, 11,829 from Canada and 43,516 in the United States.
This year, birders will be keen to see the results of counts along the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast for hints on the impacts of this summer’s hurricanes on local birds.
Idahoans have been participating since 1914, when the state’s first Christmas Bird Count was organized in Moscow, said Shirley Sturts of Audubon’s Coeur d’Alene chapter.
Three participants counted eight species of birds that year, she said.
This year, North Idaho will have at least six groups involving dozens of participants counting dozens of species and sending the results to the national database.
“New birders are always welcome to join the counts,” said Alan McCoy, the Spokane chapter coordinator for 10-12 groups heading out next Sunday for the Spokane count. “I don’t think I have missed a Christmas Bird Count since 1980,” he said.
“What we see depends on the year and the weather,” said Jerry Cline, who works at the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge. Cline will help coordinate two counts this year, one in Colville and one at the refuge.