Christmas Bird Counts

The Christmas Bird Count season arrived on December 14, 2022 and I was excited to do the Richmond-Munster count again after missing it last year. The Christmas Bird Count period falls in the days between December 14 and January 5th; each region picks a date within that period and conducts a formal census of all the individual birds seen within a 24-hour period. A Christmas Bird Count region is defined as a 24 kilometre (15 mile) circle that does not overlap with another region, usually centered on a town or important landmark. As such, they are referred to as “count circles”. The Ottawa count circle, for example, is centered on Parliament Hill, neighbouring the Dunrobin count circle to the west and the Richmond-Munster count circle to the south. Each count region is then broken down into count sectors with a leader for each, and this leader is responsible for providing their count totals to the count compiler.

Count volunteers are given specific routes in a sector, counting every bird they see or hear throughout the day. Both species and individuals are counted in order to determine the total number of birds in the circle that day. If you live within the boundaries of a count circle, you can participate by reporting the birds that visit your yard or feeder on count day, providing that you have contacted the region’s count compiler of your intention to participate ahead of time. You can find a map of Canadian CBC circles and the compiler contact info on the map on the Birds Canada website.

Sarsaparilla Trail on Count Day

My first Christmas Bird Count

Pine Grosbeak

This year the Audubon Christmas Bird Count celebrates its 121st year. Counting birds at Christmas became a tradition in the year 1900 when ornithologist Frank M. Chapman proposed it as an alternative to the annual Christmas side hunt, a competition in which two different teams killed “practically everything in fur or feathers that crossed their path”. The idea of wildlife conservation was just beginning to take hold around the turn of the 20th century, and Chapman seemed optimistic that burgeoning criticism of the side hunt was a sign that the unnecessary slaughter of hundreds of non-game birds was coming to an end. Chapman asked readers of the journal Bird Lore (the predecessor of Audubon Magazine) to spend some of their time on Christmas Day conducting a census of the birds in their area and send the results to him for publication in February. During that first Christmas Bird Count, 27 enthusiastic birders from two provinces and thirteen states tallied 90 species. Counts took place in New Brunswick, Ontario, a handful of northeastern states, Missouri, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, and California. In most cases, there was only one observer per count!