2021 Christmas Bird Count Final Tally

The Final Tally for the Christmas Bird Count held on December 18, 2021 can be found here and in the February 2022 Western Grebe.

 

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For the second year in a row, the annual Redbud Audubon Society will be holding a limited Christmas Bird Count. The annual Clear Lake Christmas Bird Count, held by the Redbud Audubon Society, will be on Saturday, Dec. 18. The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a traditional project of Audubon societies around the country. Because of the continuing precarious Covid 19 situation once again only previous participants will be able to take part in the count this year. These participants have been sent information about meeting times and places by the count organizers, Brad and Kathy Barnwell.

Previous to the bird count, on Thursday, Dec. 16 starting at 7 p.m. Doug and Lisa Prather will host a Zoom Bird Identification program. Just click on the link in the newsletter (if you receive it online) or go to www.redbudaudubon.organd click the “register” option on the home page. The link to join the program will be sent you the day of the program. This will be an extensive slide show featuring birds that are often seen on the annual count and birds that are common to Lake County. The program emphasizes the field characteristics of the common and some not-so-common birds here.

National Audubon has been holding a Christmas Bird Count for 122 years.  The official count period usually starts around the middle of December and ends the first week of January. Local Audubon Societies can decide what day they conduct their counts within this time frame. Every individual bird and species encountered during the day is recorded. Each count group has a designated circle of 15 miles in diameter and tries to cover as much ground as possible within a certain period of time.

Count volunteers follow specified routes through the designated 15-mile (24-km) diameter circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. It’s not just a species tally—all birds are counted all day, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day.

The data collected by each count group are then sent to the National Audubon Headquarters in New York and is made available online.

The Christmas Bird Count began more than a century ago when 27 conservationists in 25 localities, led by scientist and writer Frank Chapman, changed the course of ornithological history.

On Christmas Day in 1900, the small group posed an alternative to the “side hunt,” a Christmas day activity in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small mammals. Instead, Chapman proposed to identify, count, and record all the birds they saw, founding what is now considered to be the world’s most significant citizen-based conservation effort – and century-old institution.

Scientists rely on the remarkable trend data of Audubon’s CBC to better understand how birds and the environment are faring throughout North America – and what needs to be done to protect them. Data from Audubon’s signature Citizen Science program are at the heart of numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies.