About 35 years ago, one of the first news stories I covered for a television station in Omaha, Neb., was the Annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I was a fresh young(er) reporter and I vividly remember interviewing a young lad who was very earnest about the work his family was doing on that cold winter’s day.
I never forgot that story or that boy’s enthusiasm. These days tens of thousands of people (including scads of RVers) are scanning the skies as part of the (117th) Annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count that is currently underway through Jan. 5, 2017.
This is a great opportunity for a family project during the holiday break, it’s free and a lot of fun. This long-running Citizen Science survey provides “critical data on population trends.” Data from the thousands of circles are entered after the count and become available” to the public.
It all began on Christmas Day 1900, when “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.”
Here’s how you can help … click here
Photo: Wood Duck . (Source: Arthur Morris/Vireo, Audubon website)