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Our late autumn has been absurdly warm in the northeastern United States and though winter is only days away it seems no one has notified the weather.  That is, no one had notified the weather until this past Sunday, the day of the Queens County Christmas Bird Count. While it wasn’t unreasonably cold it was [...]

Laura Wright has written an excellent article for onearth about her first Christmas Bird Count, which was the 61st iteration of the count in Troy, New York.

Saturday was the 76th Long Branch Christmas Bird Count, a count I’ve compiled since 2008. It’s a fun, diverse count with coastal lakes, ocean views, a landfill, wetlands, and a lots of landbirding. Unfortunately, most of those birding opportunities are thwarted when Mother Nature drops 2 feet of snow on NJ, as she did last [...]

There are certain challenges to putting on a Christmas Bird Count in the High Arctic. Most people would think that the big challenge is the cold, and while it can make things challenging, it really doesn’t distinguish our counts from, say those in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, or many of the northern States. I’ve often maintained [...]

This year’s Christmas Bird Count in Queens was a very different experience for me than the last two.  I was in a completely different section of the count with completely different birders, and the new (to me) section of the count traditionally gets the most birds simply because of the ocean, beach, bay, and grassland-like [...]

Seeing as today is the first day of the Christmas Bird Count count period it seems like a good time to share Jochen’s tips from when he prepared for his his first Christmas Bird Count back in 2006.  You might also wish to read his follow-up post in which he discusses what they found.

Regular readers here know of my dedication to all things related to birds and Queens, the best borough in New York City.  The Queens Christmas Bird Count is coming up in six days, on Sunday, 19 December, and we need more birders!  If you are interested in joining in please contact Ian Resnick, the Queens [...]

This past Sunday was the Queens County Christmas Bird Count, my second living in the borough and doing the count.  We originally were scheduled to do the count on 20 December of last year but, well, weather got in the way so we had to put off the count for two weeks.  Anyway, when Sunday [...]

This is is the most magical time of the year, one filled with holiday cheer, festive celebrations, and… surveys of winter avifauna? That’s right! For the American birding community, the holiday season heralds more than blinking lights, tree trimming, and rampant consumerism. It’s also time for the Christmas Bird Count, which explains why we’re republishing [...]

It was cold and dark when I awakened on Saturday at 5:45 in the morning.  My gear was all packed and ready so I just had to slip into my several layers of clothing, drink some coffee, shrug on my backpack, and get out the door.  As I walked through the flurries over the ice [...]

Christmas Bird Counts are a wonderful way to spend a cold December day.  Just imagine groups of birders, spread out across a fifteen-mile diameter circle, trying to count every single bird that they see or hear.  At the end of the day the birders gather together to report what they’ve found, brag about their rare [...]

Tuesday was the day for me to use my third-to-last day off of the year for, what else, birding! The Catskill-Coxsackie Christmas Bird Count, in its forty-seventh year, is always held on the first Tuesday of the count period. It also manages to attract some top birders as the habitat is good and varied, the [...]

This year, for the second year in a row, Sector C of the Saratoga Christmas Bird Count was mine. Last year, Will, Tom, Bruce and I managed to track down 39 species but none of them were spectacular (though our four Red-winged Blackbirds set a new count high). This year, only Will joined me in [...]

Today was the Bronx/Westchester Christmas Bird Count. Although I participate in the West Bronx CBC every year, the confluence of family, professional, and social obligations precludes me from making the kind of commitment I’d like. Unable to meet up with other counters or attend the count compilation festivities, I’m an outsider whose observations of common [...]