Counting on You This Winter to Monitor Birds

January is here, and it is finally winter. For birders, this can be a slow time where the usual cast of avian characters changes little from now through late March. For these very reasons, winter is an excellent time to contribute to local community science efforts aimed at monitoring bird populations, and there are many ways to get involved and enjoy birds this winter! National Audubon's Christmas Bird Count (CBC) may be the first survey that comes to mind. CBC 'circles' number 2,600, with over 80,000 people participating worldwide in this effort. Sentinel readers will recall past articles detailing results of this one-day annual census in late December. The Keene count conducted this past December was one for the record books, setting an all-time high of 75 bird species observed on count day, a remarkable 13 more than the past highest. The CBC, the world's first community science project and among the most wide-reaching of all wildlife surveys, was designed to be a snapshot of winter bird distribution and populations. But late December is not always winter in all these places and certainly wasn't in Keene last month! A changing climate means that 'real winter' sometimes arrives later than the calendar designation of the season. This delayed onset means many more birds lingering in our area rather than migrating south, such as the hordes of Eastern Bluebirds, several Northern Flickers, and the record high count of 24 Winter Wrens tallied on the Keene count. So, if the CBC doesn't accurately depict winter bird populations everywhere, how do we know if bird populations are changing? Thankfully, several other late-winter surveys exist for conservation biologists to assess winter bird distribution. The following four projects I'll highlight, like the CBC, also have a participatory aspect, so YOU can help answer these questions. These surveys rely on the observations made by 'community scientists', so an average volunteer without formal training in the scientific field and a basic level of bird identification experience can contribute, too. Let's start with the best-known, the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). This joint effort of the National Audubon, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada is the most wide-reaching single effort to document birds at a particular time of year. Now ongoing for a quarter of a century, the worldwide scope of this survey is truly astounding. In 2023 alone during the survey period, birders submitted over 300,000 checklists containing 7,720 species of birds across 200 countries! You can also be part of this effort to monitor birds by observing them for as little as 15 minutes on any day between February 16 and 19 and submitting your results through eBird. I'm offering a GBBC field trip at the Harris Center's bird feeders on February 16th which is open to all. Register at https://harriscenter.org/events/birding-for-all-great-backyard-bird-count. A similar but older effort occurs locally across New Hampshire each February on the second weekend of the month. New Hampshire Audubon (NHA), in 1987, launched its Backyard Winter Bird Survey (BWBS) to track the distribution and abundance of many 'backyard' bird species during a time of relatively little bird migration movement. This survey truly is designed for backyard observations, especially bird feeding stations where much of the activity is in mid-winter. The findings – each year different and containing interesting storylines due to wild food availability, weather, and other factors – are detailed each year in New Hampshire Bird Records, a publication of NHA. For more information, visit https://nhbirdrecords.org/backyard-winter-bird-survey/. Newer on the scene is Climate Watch, a survey launched by National Audubon in 2016 that focuses on monitoring the effects of climate change on a suite of songbird species. Many birds have been deemed vulnerable to the impacts of climate change by the organization, but how and where their populations might change is less understood. Volunteer birders survey a suite of species (including bluebirds, nuthatches, goldfinches and towhees) by sight and sound, conducting point counts along driving routes in both mid-winter and summer. Hundreds of volunteers have helped biologists learn about how ranges are changing in its short history. Learn more about Climate Watch by visiting https://www.audubon.org/conservation/climate-watch, and send me an email with your interest in participating. Lastly, the Winter Raptor Survey, a favorite of my family's and a project of the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA) which started in 2007. As raptor lovers, my family and I began participating in this project several years ago when our kids were very young. This driving route is identical each year and runs at a similar time frame between December and February and a day with similar weather conditions to assess changes in wintering raptor populations. We usually run our driving route on New Year's Day along the agricultural areas of the Connecticut River between Chesterfield and Charlestown. We welcomed the new year again recently with binoculars on in search of hawks, eagles, falcons and vultures, stopping to identify each raptor, take a GPS point, and describe the habitat and its behavior. Doing these surveys for many years, patterns begin to emerge in this survey, but there are always surprises, too. red-tailed hawks always lead the way in number by a long shot, and bald eagles are inching their way higher in the rankings as they continue to expand in numbers, now numbering over 100 pairs in NH alone. This year, we added a surprising four black vultures, a species rapidly expanding into the Northeast, to our list. Paired with Christmas Bird Count data and some of the other surveys mentioned above, biologists now have a better handle on what raptor species to focus conservation efforts on – the result of many of these participatory community science efforts. For more information, visit https://www.hmana.org/winter-raptor-survey/. Phil Brown is Bird Conservation Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education based in Hancock, NH. His many bird-related roles include coordinating the Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory, compiling two Christmas Bird Counts including Keene, and engaging community scientists in data collection efforts across the Monadnock Region. He can be reached at brown@harriscenter.org.