Delaware's Christmas bird counts continue longest-running citizen science project
Maddy LauriaOn Christmas Day 119 years ago, a New Jersey native tried out a new holiday tradition.
Instead of heading out to shoot as many migrating birds as possible, Frank M. Chapman and a handful of other birders left the firearms behind and decided to count the birds instead.
The holiday bird count has become the nation's longest standing community science project, as thousands of bird enthusiasts across the country grab binoculars instead of guns and head to the woods.
"That's how it all started," said Bill Stewart, an avid birder and former president of the Delmarva Ornithological Society. "And then it became an organized nationwide event. And it's pretty cool."
Locally, there are two weekends left to participate in Delaware's annual Christmas bird counts:
- Saturday, Dec. 22, in the Wilmington area. To participate, contact Jim White at (302) 593-9622 or hylajwhite@aol.com.
- Sunday, Dec. 23 in the Middletown area. To participate, contact Anthony Gonzon at (302)-598-5893 or atgonzon@verizon.net.
- Saturday, Dec. 29 in the Rehoboth Beach area. To participate, contact Sally O’Byrne at (302) 584-4783 or salobyrne@gmail.com.
- Sunday, Dec. 30 around Cape Henlopen and Prime Hook. To participate, contact Frank Rohrbacher at (302) 475-5771 or rohrbaf@aol.com.
Why count birds?
The point of these annual counts is to collect data on wintering birds across the country. That localized information is added to a 119-year-old data bank that can provide information to scientists and biologists about trends in population, Stewart said.
Christmas Bird Count data have been used in more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and can help guide conservation decisions, said Chandler Lennon, a spokesman with the National Audubon Society.
That data has helped shed light on the state of birds as shown in the 2014 Audubon Birds and Climate Change Report, which found that more than half of the bird species in North America are threatened by a changing climate, Lennon said.
In Delaware, the Delmarva Ornithological Society organizes six bird count circles statewide. To see all the count circles nationwide, go to www.arcg.is/n5qu8.
As for the timing, counting birds in the winter is much easier, Stewart said, for the simple reason that the trees have no leaves, making those feathered friends easier to spot.
"Winter birding can be some of the best birding there is," he said.
Last year's count
Lennon said the Audubon's 2017 Christmas count included a record-setting 2,585 count circles with 1,957 counts in the United States, 463 in Canada and 165 in Latin America, the Caribbean, Bermuda and the Pacific Islands. That marked the eighth consecutive year of record-breaking counts, he said.
Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.
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