Feathered Friends : The Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count returns this year to catalogue local species.
“While the exceptionally fine weather on Christmas day was sufficient inducement to take one afield, we trust that the spirit of wholesome competition aroused by the bird census added materially to the pleasure of those who took part in it.” This report came from the Audubon Society’s first magazine, Bird Lore, in December of 1900 describing the nationwide launch of a remarkable environmental tradition.
The Christmas bird count initially took place at only 25 locations--from Monterey to Massachusetts. In 1992 it’s going on at 1,600 places. It has been an annual event in Ventura County since the ‘70s.
The original bird count was launched by a clever ornithologist, Frank Chapman, as a protest against a bloodthirsty practice in vogue at the turn of the century--the “side hunt.” Teams of otherwise sensible people fanned out into the countryside each Christmas, divided into two “sides,” and the team that shot the most birds was the winner. Chapman gradually persuaded people to count our feathered friends rather than shoot them.
“It’s a new game every year,” said Fred Heath of Simi Valley, who participates in several holiday season “counts” in our area. These daylong events take place in Ventura, the Conejo Valley, Santa Barbara and over the hill in Lancaster. “It’s a fun rivalry, not cutthroat. We even help one another,” said Heath.
Virgil Ketner is the “compiler” or scorekeeper for the Ventura event, which covers the area from Lake Casitas to the Santa Clara River. It took place last Sunday because the rules nowadays say it doesn’t have to happen exactly on Christmas but any day in the last two weeks of the holiday season.
Ketner led a group of 30, more than the number who participated across the whole continent during the 1900 Christmas season. Ketner’s group, which the Times photographed at a training session earlier this month, regularly spots more than 20,000 individual birds representing 185 different species.
Fred Heath’s group counted birds in Lancaster last Saturday. That desert area contained more than 40,000 birds but only about 120 different types, such as horned larks, American coots, water pipits and sharp-shinned hawks. The Conejo Valley group will count in the area bordered by Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Point Mugu this Sunday. This season’s Santa Barbara count, conducted annually since 1913, is Jan. 2.
The Ventura group’s record of sightings--calculated by different species and numbers of birds in each species--ranks regularly in the top 10 nationally. Only Santa Barbarans and some folks in Corpus Christi, Tex., with 200 species to their credit, out-count us, according to Geoff LeBaron, the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count editor in New York.
“It’s a good way to get people interested in conservation,” he said. “The data that’s collected is very good. No single person can know everything about every bird, but there’s always one good observer in every group (to train the others).”
We obviously have a lot of good people locally because our winning teams are up against more than 40,000 participants in all 50 states and Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America and the Pacific Islands.
“Birds are the first animals to be affected by various environmental threats such as habitat destruction and pollution,” LeBaron said. His statistics, published annually in the Audubon official publication American Birds, are used by scientists and governments worldwide.
This huge volunteer effort has achieved considerable scientific prestige. Ninety years of consistent data is a statistician’s dream.
“A shopping center, new roads into and out of suburban areas, even a parking lot influences the numbers,” said LeBaron. “It’s like the famous canary in the coal mine as an indicator of the health of the environment.”
Ventura resident Linda O’Neill, a participant in last Sunday’s count, emphasized that the goal of the Christmas competition is to “get the most numbers of species.” This way you learn “if the spotted owl or pygmy owl has come back--they’re already rare here.”
She went on to mention one breed that’s doing well in farming areas such as Ventura County. “Our growers are using fewer and fewer chemicals, so insects appear. The common poor-will, a member of the goat-sucker or nightjar family, has a huge gape. It flies around all night with its mouth open wide, catching insects. The farmers love it.”
Yes, dear reader, this is the true story of the romantic creature we commonly think of as a whippoorwill. It’s nothing but an airborne bigmouth shark. But, like most birds, this one’s our friend.
Anyway, I think this stuff is more interesting than a partridge in a pear tree at this time of year.
* FYI
If you want to help with the annual Audubon Society’s bird count in our area this year, call 482-0411 about the Conejo Valley group or 964-1468 about the Santa Barbara group.
