birdsoup

On the Sunday before Christmas birders of all skill levels fanned out through lower Westchester and upper Bronx to identify and count all the birds they could find. They identified 120 different species and tallied more than 55,000 individual birds.

Their efforts, known as the Christmas Bird count, continued a tradition that has occurred annually for 90 years in this area and even longer elsewhere. The idea of venturing out in cold weather to count birds may not seem like a traditional jolly Christmas activity. It actually started as a kind of protest.

At the turn of the 18th century large family gatherings were commonplace on Christmas Day. Lots of food, family and gifts. On the following day, the day after Christmas, they continued holiday festivities with an event know as the “Side Hunt”. The men and boys grabbed rifles and shotguns and headed to the fields and forests to shoot birds. Any bird. Every bird. As many birds as possible. At the end of the day, the man with the largest pile of dead birds was declared the winner.

Non-Violent Protest.

The Christmas Bird Count began as a non-violent protest to this senseless killing. Instead of shooting birds, they simply counted them.
The popularity of the “side hunt” has died out. But the Christmas Bird Count continues strong. Last year, over 60,000 people participated making it the longest running Citizen Science survey in the world. And the count has generated signification data about the distribution of birds and their populations.

In my next post, I point out some interesting data from this year’s count.