Amidst the silent majesty of this cold Christmas morn, I can only assume you are all gathered around the radio, in the warm embrace of kith and kin, waiting to hear the latest results of the local bird counts. That’s right, we’re well into the 125th Christmas Bird Count season, and many birds have been tallied already from both sides of Buzzard’s Bay to the mid and Lower Cape.
The Christmas Bird Count was invented 125 years ago by ornithologist Frank Chapman of the National Audubon Society. Competitive team sport hunting was a popular Christmas activity back then, enough so that the results of which team blasted the most critters made the papers. Chapman decided to start a new tradition wherein people counted the birds instead of shooting them. Twenty-seven people participated in his first count, from Concord, MA to Toronto to California, tallying 90 species. That’s a meager total, one I have gotten just covering North Dennis in a day, probably because they held that first one on actual Christmas day, when I assume people had other things to do. Nowadays, upwards of 80,000 birders participate and count more than 2000 species across the Americas during the three-week count period.
In the CAI listening area alone we have 11 Christmas Bird Counts. The Buzzards Bay and anachronistically named Cape Cod counts are always held the first weekend of the count period, which was the 14th and 15th this year. The Cape count covers Harwich to Eastham, and typically turns up between 120 and 140 species. The highlight this year was a Sedge Wren, a secretive, nomadic little songbird the color of winter grass, found at Fort Hill in Eastham.
I helped with the Nauset Beach sector, where species were few, and the hoped for Snowy Owl did not materialize. But the overall aesthetic on that spectacular outer beach was superb on a rare windless day, helped by a wandering flurry of 50 Snow Buntings that followed us around as we drove up and down the beach – these charming visitors from the high Arctic are among my favorite birds and deserve their own Bird Report one of these days. And Black-legged Kittiwakes, strictly seafaring gulls of the far north, provided rare, close looks over glassy water by the inlet in Chatham.
I have helped with the same sector of the Mid-Cape Count, covering a slice of the bay side from Sesuit to Gray’s Beach, since the late 90s. Sunday’s count felt more like one of the old ones, in that it was actually cold. Us Christmas counters have gotten used to balmy, gloveless winter birding in more recent years, so I felt unprepared for the 20-degree temps and relentless, biting wind off the bay as we trudged the Gray’s Beach boardwalk at 0645. Our highlights there were two close adult Bald Eagles, one who landed in the marsh close to the parking lot, and a lingering, chilly looking Greater Yellowlegs, who left us wondering what keeps those long, bare legs from freezing – I know the stock scientific answer involving specialized circulatory systems, but it doesn’t seem to make sense on a day like that. Blowing snow meant distant, but normally identifiable ducks stayed anonymous, but some of my crew picked up two very late Manx Shearwaters off Corporation Beach. Others found a handsome Eurasian Wigeon on a secluded pond where we’ve had them before – the name should give you a hint on where they should normally be.
I don’t have final species tallies for any of the counts yet so I’ll save that for the final wrap up. Next up are the three island counts, which includes Tuckernuck, then Truro on the 31st, plus Plymouth on January 2nd, and Stellwagen Bank, which is a boat-only count for the national marine sanctuary, scheduled based on the weather.
You won’t see anyone out counting today - no one schedules these Christmas counts on actual Christmas Day anymore, which is a shame for anyone looking to avoid their family and their responsibilities – it would be great if when you’ve just been enrolled in a jelly of the month club and your version of cousin Eddie rolls up in an RV to stay for the holiday, you could say – “sorry, I’m off to count birds,” before fleeing to the safety of nature.