Counting Crows (and Chickadees, Finches and Hawks Too)
Durango Herald, January 11, 2004
Lisa Branner and Ann Rilling

Christmas Bird Counts are a good example of “citizen based science” which helps researchers follow trends of early winter bird distribution.

Everry year for the past 104 years, in late December and early January, bird enthusiasts have trudged outdoors, peering through binoculars and spotting scopes, to participate in the Christmas Bird Count.

This tradition was started by the National Audubon Society on Christmas Day in 1900 as an alternative activity to the “side hunt” where people chose sides, then went afield with their guns and whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won. The first bird count was conducted mainly in the northeastern U.S. by 27 participants who counted 90 species and 18,500 individual birds.

Today, the Christmas Bird Count is carried on throughout the world in more than 2,000 locations by nearly 55,000 volunteers, who last year, counted 2,682 species (20% of the world’s total species) and 73,137,878 birds. Participants follow specified routes through an established 15-mile diameter circle counting every bird they see and hear all day.

They tally the total number of birds as well as the number of species. This year’s bird count in La Plata County resulted in 66 species and ??4,500 individual birds. La Plata County’s first bird count was in 1949.

Christmas Bird Counts are a good example of “citizen based science” which helps researchers follow trends of early winter bird distribution. A dramatic example of how the bird count can reflect changes in bird populations involves the European starling. In 1960, the first year this data was available, there was a count of 4,031 starlings in Colorado (La Plata County documented its first starling in 1952).

The following year the number was up to 4,703. By 1975 22,268 starlings were counted, in 1990 the number was 52,814, and in 2002 there were 58,138 starlings. It began in 1890 when a few starlings were introduced into the eastern U.S. in effort to bring birds mentioned by Shakespeare to this continent.

The population rapidly expanded. Starlings cause trouble by competing with native birds, such as bluebirds, for habitat and nesting sites. The Christmas Bird Count is an effective way of tracking trends of increasing or declining bird populations.

Camaraderie and friendly rivalry are also a big part of the Christmas Bird Count. Last year local bird guides from Ecuador were in competition with guides from Costa Rica to try to count more than 400 species during the one day count. While Ecuador counted an impressive 389, the Rain Forest Aerial Tram team in Costa Rica did reach the goal by counting and even 400!

One of the highlights of any bird count is finding rare and unexpected birds. A flock of sandhill cranes gliding high in the sky above Silverton, a varied thrush eating berries along the Animas River Trail, and a long-tail duck floating on Pastorius Resevoir have added excitement to the regular, but never mundane, birds counted in recent winters.