Beak Count : Birders Tally Teals, Loons and the Like in Annual Ritual

Loren Hays had been in bed for hours when most people were just starting to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

His sleep was important. He got up in the darkness Sunday morning, made his way toward the coastal wetlands and waited for the sun to rise so he could look through a telescope and spot such species as the double-crested cormorant, northern shoveler, blue-winged teal, common loon and the long-billed dowitcher.

Hays, a biologist at Cal State Long Beach and for the federal government, gathered with his wife, Debra, and five others, including Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Esther Burkett, for an annual bird count in a small, rain-soaked parking lot at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve near Pacific Coast Highway just south of Huntington Harbour.

The Christmas season count, conducted throughout the country by members of the Audubon Society, collects valuable data on bird numbers and habitats.

As the sun made its first appearance of the day, about the time many New Year’s Eve revelers went to bed, Hays’ group fanned out over the state Department of Fish and Game’s wetland reserve to count birds.

Other groups met at other places along the coast to count birds and gather information about species. One group group went by boat to make its count Sunday.

“They used to have bird shoots around Christmas,” Hays said. “They would go out and blast everything in sight. In the late ‘40s or early ‘50s, someone decided that counting the birds might be a better alternative than shooting them.”

So each year, members of the Audubon Society and others, who like to call themselves birders, go out and count the birds. There are two counts each year, one inland and one along the coast.

“Much of the information that is gathered during the counts is now used as a scientific database,” Hays said.

The counters carry official tally sheets that list about 180 species of birds.

The advanced birder in each counting group--in this case Hays--peers through a telescope scanning the wetlands for the birds. Hays called out their names as he found them.

It went something like this:

“Five northern harriers. Thirty-five long-billed dowitchers. Thirty-five common loon. One bufflehead and twelve northern pintail.”

As Hays rattled off the names, Debbie Hays thumbed through the pages to find the species and note the numbers.

“A red-breasted merganser. A pied-billed grebe. Two surf scoters and an American coot.”

Then the group moved to a new position. Hays began his search again. He looked around the estuary for birds. When he found them, he called out their species too.

Hays did not need a book to identify the birds found Sunday. Asked how many species he could identify by sight, he modestly replied, “Less than a thousand.”

Last year was a particularly good one for the coastal counters. They spotted 214 species, the second highest count in the nation.

“I don’t think we’ll come close to that this year,” Hays said. “Many of the mountain birds are not here this year.”

Counting birds is not an easy job, and prospective counters are warned ahead of time about the long hours.

“Remember, every daylight hour counts,” warned a newsletter for the Sea & Sage Audubon Society, a local chapter. “One year, rough-winged swallows, northern water thrushes, lesser nighthawks and western screech owls were all found as the sun was setting or later. That means four species would have been missed if counters had quit early.”

“It is the world’s greatest hobby, and I’ve tried about everything,” Hays said of birding. “No day is ever the same. There’s always a surprise. It’s the thrill of seeing something new or rare, the number of species or the numbers in a particular species.”

Other birds spotted Sunday included some song sparrows, a black-billed plover, a Belding’s Savannah sparrow, a great blue heron, ruddy ducks and a brown pelican.

Also spotted waddling along the water was one large, white, domestic goose.

Pointing to the goose, which looked out of place surrounded by the smaller wild birds, Hays noted that people who abandon domestic birds in wildlife reserves can be arrested by a game warden.