‘Tis the Season for Bird Counting

1. This yearly National Audubon Society event consists of volunteers in 20 countries counting every bird (species and number) they see or hear in one day.

2. Volunteers count birds within fixed 15-mile circles. See Hawaiʻs’s circles here.

3. To join part of a circle, sign up in advance with local compilers for a route and day assignment. The project runs between December 14 and January 5. (Compilers’ emails are listed at the above site.)

4. The Christmas Bird Count replaced a traditional contest of the 1800s called the Christmas Side Hunt when hunters shot birds and other wildlife on Christmas Day. Winners got to boast about their superior hunting skills.

5. These competitions caused massive numbers of birds to be killed, threatening their populations.

6. In 1900, American ornithologist, Frank Chapman (1864-1945), replaced killing with counting, resulting in this worldwide conservation effort called the Christmas Bird Count.

7. Tallies are given to each compiler who sends the data to National Audubon for analysis.

8. Collected statistics help managers monitor bird populations, track species movements, understand climate impacts, and guide policy.

9. Researchers at the Bishop Museum used decades of Christmas Bird Count data in the notable report The Birds of the Hawaiian Islands (Pyle, R.L., and P. Pyle. 2017).

10. You can help Hawaiʻs’s birds and have a fun holiday experience with friends and family by participating in this count, one of the nation’s longest-running citizen science projects.