Prior to the turn of the century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt": They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won.
Conservation was in its beginning stages around the turn of the 20th century, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman, an early officer in the then budding Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition-a "Christmas Bird Census"-that would count birds in the holidays rather than hunt them.
So began the Christmas Bird Count. Thanks to the inspiration of Frank M. Chapman and the enthusiasm of twenty-seven dedicated birders, twenty-five Christmas Bird Counts were held that day. The locations ranged from Toronto, Ontario to Pacific Grove, California with most counts in or near the population centers of northeastern North America. Those original 27 Christmas Bird Counters tallied around 90 species on all the counts combined. http://birds.audubon.org/history-christmas-bird-countI recommend that you go to the page linked above - there are some other interesting links, like cumulative bird count for that first Christmas Bird Count - of course, the names of many of the birds will be unfamiliar as so many have been change over the years. This year was the 115th CBC (Christmas Bird Count)!
Back to our sightings! It was a slow day at the feeder with none of our usual sparrows and very few blue jays, goldfinch and even mourning doves! Woodpeckers were well represented, although we haven't see the pileated recently (the neighbors across the street took down the pileated restaurant tree and we haven't seen him since). We also had quite a few juncos and a lovely cardinal pair. Bluebirds were not around, although Carol says she has seen them recently.
On the pond we had a large flock of Canada Geese (for those of you who are not birders, note that it is Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese - the Canada was a person's name, not the country). Then Carol alerted us to a large flock of Common Mergansers and we saw 4 females & 6 males. There were more than that, as Carol had a different count, seeing 8 with more females than males. Mergansers are hard to count; they keep diving!! :-)
Today we had a nice flock of Hooded Mergansers, but they didn't show up yesterday.
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| Hooded Mergansers - three males and a female in front of the bird on the left - look for the fuzzy brown head |
But the truly fun sighting was the Belted Kingfisher! Linda & I had been hearing it on the pond as we sat on the porch watching the dawn birds. We kept saying, "It sounds like a kingfisher, but what is it doing here NOW, at this time of year??" Turns out that it is a year round bird (as long as the water is open), but we have just never seen it or heard it because our morning sits were short (and way before sunrise) in order to get to work on time. Now that we are retired, the porch sit time is more like a half hour! (but much shorter the day it was only 22ยบ out!) We heard the kingfisher yesterday AM, but then while I was watching and counting the mergansers, something flew through my binocular vision - it was about kingfisher size, so I zeroed in on it and YES!!! It WAS a kingfisher! Woo Hoo!!
