Cold weather hinders bird count

Both number of species and number of individual birds counted was down slightly for the 2009 Apalachicola / St. Vincent Christmas Bird Count.

Organizer Alan Knothe said he believed the reductions were due to windy weather.

Seth Blitch, who led a party on Little Saint George Island, said the extremely cold and windy weather made the count very challenging.

Knothe said the lower figures were still within the normal range for the count.

Seven teams of bird counters went into the field for a total of 67 team hours. They walked, drove or boated 134 miles and counted 10,681 birds belonging to 134 species. Last year birders logged 145 species and over 40,000 individuals but about 30,000 were members of a single enormous flock of ducks.

There were eight additional “count week species” reported. A count week species is any species that was not seen on count day but was seen either three days before, or three days after, the count. The bird must have been seen within the count circle.

Bald eagles continue to thrive locally; 40 were spotted this year.

The first Christmas Bird Count was held in 1900, a follow-up to the 19th century holiday tradition when people engaged in a Christmas "Side Hunt." They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of dead animals won.

Many observers and scientists had become concerned about declining bird populations, and so, beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman, an early officer in the then-budding Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition-a "Christmas Bird Census" that would count birds rather than hunt them.

Thanks to the inspiration of Chapman and the enthusiasm of 27 dedicated birders, 25 Christmas Bird Counts were held that day, their locations ranging from Toronto, Ontario to Pacific Grove, California, with most counts in or near the population centers of northeastern North America.

Those original Christmas Bird Counters tallied a total of 90 species on all the counts combined.