{"id":551,"date":"2013-03-14T17:09:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T21:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/?p=551"},"modified":"2013-03-14T17:09:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T21:09:47","slug":"history-of-the-audubon-christmas-bird-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2013\/03\/14\/history-of-the-audubon-christmas-bird-count\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, a popular activity in New England towns on Christmas Day was the “side hunt”.\u00a0 The men of the town would divide up into two sides and then comb the countryside and shore, shooting every bird (and mammal as well) they could.\u00a0 At the end of the day, each side would pile up all the animal carcasses they had collected.\u00a0 The team with the bigger pile was declared the winner.\u00a0 If you are like me, you regard this practice as barbaric and senseless.\u00a0 Frank Chapman, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History and a leader of the nascent National Audubon Society, thought so too and offered an alternative.\u00a0 Instead of shooting birds, people were encouraged to go out and count the birds they saw.\u00a0 The counts that people made were then published and served as a record of the bird abundance and distribution for particular areas.\u00a0 Thus was born the Christmas Bird Count.<\/p>\n

The first censuses were held on Christmas Day, 1900.\u00a0 Twenty-five counts and 27 birders conducted those counts.\u00a0 Most were in the northeastern United States but Toronto and Pacific Grove, California were covered as well.\u00a0 Collectively, these original counts produced a cumulative list of 90 species of birds.<\/p>\n

A standardized method for conducting Christmas Bird Counts (hereafter, CBC’s) was established to allow comparisons of counts between different areas.\u00a0 The unit of a CBC is the count circle, a circle with a radius of 7.5 miles from a fixed point.\u00a0 On one day during the national count period (mid-December to early January), observers spread out in a count circle and count all the birds they see or hear in one calendar day.\u00a0 The weather, number of observers and number of hours spent in the field are published on the National Audubon Society\u2019s website (http:\/\/www.audubon.org\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

These counts provide a rich source of information on changing bird populations.\u00a0 For instance, the northward and southward expansion of the House Finch, introduced into the East in New York City, can be followed by looking at CBC’s over the years.\u00a0\u00a0 Similarly, the northward expansion of Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens, and Northern Mockingbirds is well documented.\u00a0 Downward trends sound the alarm that particular species may be in trouble.\u00a0 For instance, Harlequin Ducks have been declining on CBC’s in eastern Canada and are now listed as an Endangered Species in Canada.<\/p>\n

CBC’s have become very popular activities, with a particular increase in the number of counts occurring in the early 1970’s.\u00a0 For the 2011\/2012 CBC (the 112th CBC), there were 2,248 individual counts, conducted by 63.227 observers.\u00a0 Of these counts, 2,149 were conducted in North America with the remainder in tropical areas including Central and South America, Bermuda, Hawaii and islands in the South Pacific.\u00a0 U. S. observers counted a total of 60,502,185 birds belonging to 666 species during the 2011\/2012 CBC.\u00a0 We have come a long way from the days of side hunts.<\/p>\n

In Maine, there were 32 CBC’s during the 2011\/2012 count season.\u00a0 These counts\u00a0ranged from Presque Isle in the north to York County in the south and from Eastport in the east to Sweden in the west.<\/p>\n

You do not have to be an expert to participate in a CBC.\u00a0 Some CBC\u2019s have already occurred this year, others are yet to take place. \u00a0You can find a list of all Maine CBC\u2019s and their coordinators at http:\/\/maineaudubon.org\/wildlife-habitat\/christmas-bird-count\/<\/a> \u00a0I encourage you to contact an organizer and take part in the fun. Usually the organizer will host a social gathering after the sun goes down for all the participants to have a warm drink, share the day’s memorable sightings, and compile the list.<\/p>\n

In the first three columns of every year, I discuss the highlights of many of the Maine CBC\u2019s.\u00a0 You\u2019ll see those posts soon.<\/p>\n

[First published on December 23, 2012]<\/p>\n\n

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Around the turn of the 20th century, a popular activity in New England towns on Christmas Day was the “side hunt”.\u00a0 The men of the town would divide up into two sides and then comb the countryside and shore, shooting every bird (and mammal as well) they could.\u00a0 At the end of the day, each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[921,1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}