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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 [...]

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 [...]