It's Christmas week, and part of the celebration for bird lovers, is the annual Christmas Bird Count! Naturalist Bridget Butler tells us how we all can join in the nationwide count this year.
"This year I had a special treat with the Christmas bird count. I got to bird with my Mom, all day for the first time!"
"How'd she like it?"
"She, ah...was little cold! Ha ha ha! But she had never seen so many birds before and I think that was the best part of the day."
"Can anybody do the Christmas bird count?"
"Anybody can do the Christmas bird count. We have 19 circles in the state of Vermont, and you sign up with a compiler. You can either join a team and go out and be cold, and see lots of birds. Or you can bird from home and be a feeder watcher. Set up a couple of feeders, then during the day, you keep track of how many birds you have at your feeder, and you'll send those numbers into the team."
"How do you send them in?"
"You can send them in by email, you can call them in, a lot of teams call in their numbers as well. And then the compiler is the one that submits all of the data."
"This is the oldest citizen science project in the country, it's 110 years old this year. And this is a way for us to have more scientists out there, to gather information so that we can understand a little bit more about birds. The numbers that we get from this bird count can tell us a lot about birds and their migratory patterns, who's going to stay during the winter, who's going to leave. Things that show up, that haven't been here before. Tufted titmouse is one of those birds that we didn't see a lot in Vermont 100 years ago. And now we see them all over the place.
For information on how you can join the Christmas Bird Count, check out these links!
Contact your local compiler for the Christmas Bird Count here.
To see results from current and past counts visit National Audubon Society's site.
