Sunday, Dec. 21

After somewhat of a hiatus I finally got out for some birding yesterday. Sort of birding. I did the Capital Area Audubon Christmas Bird Count with Barb. This was the 115th year of Christmas Bird Counts. Prior to 1900, and for some time past then, there was a holiday tradition of indiscriminately killing as many birds as you could on Christmas Day. The person with the largest carcass pile won. Guess that made sense in 1900. Frank Chapman, an ornithologist, put forth the idea of counting instead of killing. So in 1900 the first 25 Christmas Birds Counts happened.

Fast forward to 2014. There are now something over 2300 Christmas Birds Counts. The idea is to count all the birds within a 15-mile diameter circle. The Capital Area Audubon count has been going on for decades, with a count circle centered on Lansing. For better or worse, the area within the count circle has changed considerably in the decades since the count’s inception. In Barb’s count area this means a lot of driving in subdivisions and trailer parks. Which is fine from the view of monitoring long term trends. It is what it is. From a birding perspective, however, it gets old counting house sparrows and starlings. But we did what we had to do and participated in the world’s largest and longest running citizen science program. That’s a lot better than sitting at home watching TV.