Birding Time Again!

While most folks think of a nice relaxing Christmas break, lots of crazies are gearing up the the annual Christmas Bird Counts. Here's the deal.

Over 100 years ago, somebody said, "Let's see how many birds there are in the world." And thus began the Audubon Society's Annual Bird Count Census. It's organized now, as opposed to folks just running around the countyside yelling out, "Six creepers!" and stuff like that. We now have Count Circles--areas that are deemed to be birdily important or just plain fun (like the Rudolph Ohio Count--get it--Christmas count????) NW Ohio has several very important count circles. The North Coast, aka northern Ohio along Lake Erie, is a Big Time Birding Area. The Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge is there, along with Magee Marsh State Wildlife Refuge, East Harbor State Park, Maumee Bay State Park, and the Crane Creek area. We, of the Oak Openings, are west of the Lake, having been left behind by the ancient Lakes Whittelsey and Warren. And though it sounds like there is lots of land left on the lake, don't be fooled. Most of the marshland/wetland is gone. Conservation, as usual, was too little too late. But I digress.

Back to count circles. A point is picked and a circle with a diameter of 15 miles is drawn on the map around that point. Ta-daa, a count circle. Teams of birders go out on a given day, from mid-December to early January, and count all the birds they can find. We count species and number of individual birds--it's a census.


NW Ohio has several count circles: the Toledo, the Islands, the Refuge, blah blah blah, and the Big One: The Grand Rapids/Waterville Count. The other name for this one is the Oak Openings Count. Birders spend their holidays scoping out where the good stuff is, and I ain't talking candy canes here. Maybe Sandhill Cranes, though. With or without this rotten head cold, I'll head out with my fellow birders for a day full of chickadees, titmices, hawks, and who-knows-what else on Sunday.

Kidding aside for a moment, this is an incredibly important chunk of research. Because of the longevity of the counts, we can use this citizen science for important longitudinal studies, not only of a given species, but of trends. For example, the trend toward having more boreal species in more southernly locales was among the first research-based evidence of global climate change.

Now back to the funny stuff. Oh, wait, I'm all out of funny stuff--the head cold does that. Anywho, there are birders all over the place scoping out what may or may not be here, and any rarities that turn up a week before or after Count day are tallied, so it all counts.

But here's where I need your help. Yes you! Fill your bird feeders, and if you live inside the Oaks Count circle, check your feeder on Sunday to see what and how many of the whats are there. Email or text me, so we can add your numbers to our tally. It really is important.

And if you don't live in my count circle, contact your local Audubon Society to see if there are still counts going on in your neck of the woods. Really, get out there and get birding.