Presidents' Weekend is for the birds!

RELEASE: Jan. 11, 2008 – Volume XL, No. 2

Holidays are for the birds! No, I’m not burned out by revelry and celebrations. What I mean is that Christmas and Presidents’ Weekend are two prime times to help out our fine feathered friends.

Hundreds of volunteers devoted time between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 to the National Audubon Society’s 108th annual Christmas Bird Count. And they weren’t looking for swans-a-swimming, geese-a-laying, French hens, turtledoves or partridges in pear trees. Rather, they were helping scientists track the status of imperiled species, as well as assess the impact of environmental threats on different species.

The first Christmas Bird Count was held Dec. 25, 1900, with 27 birders at 25 sites, including three in New Jersey - Englewood, Moorestown and Newfield. They counted about 18,500 birds from 90 species. By 2000, the count had grown to more than 52,000 birders at over 1,800 sites! For the most recent count, more than 14.5 million birds were spotted nationwide. Four counting sites were in the Garden State - Moorestown, Barnegat, Elmer and Salem.

While the event is fun, the science is serious. The Christmas Bird Count data contributed to a startling 2007 report documenting a dramatic decline over the past 40 years in the numbers of even the most common birds.

It’s not too late to become one of the ‘citizen scientists’ contributing to this effort. Your next opportunity is the Great Backyard Bird Count, scheduled over Presidents’ Day Weekend, Feb. 15-18.

Sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count is only 11 years old but growing fast. Last year, the count reported over 11 million birds from 616 different species, providing a detailed snapshot of North American bird distribution. The numbers represented a 23 percent jump over 2006 totals!

It couldn’t be easier to help out. You can spend as little as 15 minutes on any day over the long holiday weekend. And you don’t even have to leave your house! The GBBC website (www.birdcount.org) will give you tips on identifying birds. Just count the birds in your backyard, or at a local park – anywhere you want – and record the highest number of each species you spot during a 15-minute interval. Then submit your data through the Great Backyard Bird Count website. There, you can also compare regional results and see or submit photos of birds taken during the count.

Last year, northern cardinals were the most frequently spotted, followed by American robins. But there were also extremely rare finds, such as two pink-footed geese spotted in Rhode Island, and five lesser prairie-chickens in Oklahoma. It was the first time either bird had been reported during the Great Backyard Bird Count.

So and try something different for Presidents’ Day Weekend this year. Skip the sales at the malls and avoid the clogged highways. Instead, grab your binoculars and spend some time in the great outdoors counting birds. Who knows, maybe you’ll even spot that partridge in a pear tree!

Find out more about the GBBC at www.birdcount.org. I hope you’ll contact me at info@njconservation.org, or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org, for more information about conserving New Jersey’s precious land and natural resources.

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