Bird Lovers Aiming High for an Accurate Yule Census Count

From a few thousand feet above the earth, Tom Potter said Saturday, the daily grind seems less important.

Potter, an education professor at Cal State Northridge and a pilot, gazed at a red-tailed hawk soaring overhead, his own feet on terra firma at the Chatsworth Reservoir in West Hills.

“I wish I were a bird sometimes,” Potter said softly. “I’d love to fly.”

In some cases, the love of flight binds bird lovers; in others it’s a shared interest in being outdoors absorbing nature. Whatever the case, the National Audubon Society’s 98th annual Christmas Bird Count brought bird-watchers from across Los Angeles County together Saturday in small gaggles of skyward-looking observers giddy at the prospect of spotting an owl or a golden eagle.

Among 46,000 volunteers from Canada to Brazil, about 75 bird census takers in the San Fernando Valley methodically counted, recorded and animatedly recounted the birds they saw.

From Southern California to Maine, Audubon members will spend the holidays spying on wild birds, with chapters making 24-hour surveys between Dec. 19 and Jan. 4, said Kenneth Freeland of the Los Angeles Audubon Society.

Next Sunday, birders will scour Los Angeles, including downtown, where peregrine falcons live in high-rises, Freeland said.

The data from the various sites will be combined later for use by scientists and conservationists who study bird migration patterns and the health of various feathered populations.

The bird-watchers count by sight and sound, carrying a notebook, binoculars and a guide book with them. But each has a sense of what is fluttering above, based on the wingspan, bill size and idiosyncrasies of the bird species.

“You can just tell after a while,” said Arthur Langton, bird count compiler for the Valley census, who led a mini-expedition through the Chatsworth Reservoir, a prime bird-spotting bowl of trees, hills and shrubs. “You know what to look or listen for.”

Langton slowly surveyed the southern side of the reservoir through his tightly squinted eyes.

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“How do we know we’re not counting the same bird twice?” he said. “We don’t. But we’re pretty sure our counts are on the conservative side.”

Though California has about 600 bird species, more than exist on the entire European continent, “we’ll be lucky to see 60 species today,” Langton said.

He pulled his hand-held tape recorder to his mouth and whispered into the microphone: “Five Western bluebirds. Two lesser goldfinches.”

It would continue all day as Langton and his bird devotees crouched, stretched and climbed for better views of a natural oasis in the heart of Los Angeles County.

“These censuses are extremely important for us to be able to look at trends in early winter bird distribution, to see what’s flying and what isn’t,” said Geoff LeBaron, Audubon’s national coordinator of the Christmas Bird Count. “Plus, these counts mark the anniversary of the end of the massive side-hunts.”

Before the turn of the century, according to LeBaron, hundreds of hunters would move in parallel lines through wooded areas to flush out birds. Many bird populations were devastated by the indiscriminate hunting that produced little food but thousands of hollow-boned corpses.

“Eventually, people were persuaded to stop hunting and go counting instead,” LeBaron said. “That’s how we have the Christmas Bird Count.”

According to the Audubon Society, the event is now the world’s largest volunteer bird count. Information gathered by previous counts has helped set aside areas for wildlife, sparing animals the concrete and traffic of development, according to the society, which also gathers information for long-term data on bird distributions and concentrations.

As Langton and his human flock paced along a grassy trail, a Western bluebird landed on a fallen branch. The bird’s bright red chest and silvery-blue back glistened in the early morning sun. Langton drew in a deep breath.

“Ah,” he said. “You look at that and you know why people go bird-watching.”

Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this story.