Grab Your Binoculars And Go—

Area Christmas Bird Count  Set For Saturday, December 17

The Western Connecticut Bird Club (WCBC) and its members will be participating in the Woodbury/Roxbury Christmas Bird Count (CBC) for the 28th consecutive year on Saturday, December 17.

The all-day event is a major activity of the bird club and one of the year’s highlights. It also serves as the bird club’s December meeting. The public is invited to join a WCBC area captain to help count the different species of birds. You need not be a bird club member and it is not necessary to live within the count circle.

The geographical area covered by the Woodbury/Roxbury CBC circle includes all or parts of the towns of Bridgewater, Brookfield, Middlebury, New Milford, Newtown, Roxbury, Southbury, Washington, and Woodbury. The circle is divided into 15 segments with each segment assigned to an area captain.

Participation for just a few hours or all day is welcome. Also, if you live within the count circle and have a bird feeder, reports of birds at your bird feeder on the count day or during the three-week count period are welcome. There will be a potluck supper after the count held at Bent of The River Audubon Center in Southbury at 5:30 pm.

For information about participating in the Woodbury/Roxbury CBC, contact organizers Chris Wood at 203-263-5331 or Ed Hagen at 203-263-0618, or contact WCBC president and Newtown resident Larry Fischer at 426-3901.

To attend the potluck supper at Bent of the River Audubon Center or for directions, call Carolyn Longstreth, 264-5902

 

The First Christmas Count

In 1899, Frank Chapman of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City had an idea to promote the growing hobby of bird watching. Through the National Association of Audubon Societies, now the National Audubon Society, and the magazine Bird Lore, which he edited, Mr Chapman established the protocol for “citizens” to do a bird population census in the following manner:

Groups of bird watchers would get together and over a 24-hour period, they would count every bird that they could find in a predetermined area, keeping track of how many different species were seen as well as the number of individual birds spotted in each group.

The count area should fall within a circle with a diameter of 15 square miles, and the 24-hour period could be on any calendar day from two weeks before Christmas to one week after Christmas.

Since that time, the concept has grown across the nation and it is spreading to other parts of the world. Presently, more than 50,000 people participate in 2,000 separate Christmas Bird Counts.

Locally, there are six separate count days during the three-week count period, and many birders from the Western Connecticut Bird Club participate in two or more counts. The total of 106 years of CBC bird count data has resulted in significant information about bird population trends.