Bird-Watchers Take Part in Unique Nationwide Count

In the space of an hour, Jeanne Polak-Recht counted a dozen white-crowned sparrows, six yellow-rumped warblers and one dark-eyed junco.

And she never even left her yard.

The president of the local chapter of the Audubon Society, Polak-Recht was one of thousands throughout Los Angeles and the rest of the country who tallied birds in their yards Saturday as part of a first- and largest-of-its-kind project to track migration and population patterns.

Unlike more traditional bird counts, which target specific areas, this weekend’s Backyard Bird Count was open to anyone with a yen for bird-watching and an eye sharp enough to identify the flash of a banded wing or striped tail.

Polak-Recht stood in her frontyard early Saturday, eyes darting from juniper bush to sycamore tree to rooftop as the sun broke through a cloudy sky. Her trusty Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds hung from her belt; in her hands, a pair of black Osprey Mark II binoculars.

“Oh boy, this is a good morning to bird,” Polak-Recht said, pointing to a neighbor’s yard. “There’s a whole bunch of goldfinches in that tree. They’re gorgeous, just gorgeous.”

When the bird count ends today, Polak-Recht plans to enter all her findings by logging onto the Internet--another unique feature to this bird count.

Sponsored by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the count is designed to attract as wide an audience as possible. Those who log onto the Internet site can see maps of bird sightings and charts of trends.

By Saturday morning, halfway through the three-day count, nearly 3,000 bird-watchers nationwide had submitted their surveys, including hundreds in the Los Angeles area, count organizers said. Many more are expected as the count draws to a close today.

Internet users can track the count at https://birdcount.cornell.edu.

“It’s really exciting,” said Allison Wells, a spokeswoman for BirdSource, the New York state group in charge of the count. “The first reports came in from Newfoundland and now you see them exploding across the screen.”

The bird count is focusing on only 100 of the most common backyard birds, such as robins, cardinals and jays.

Researchers hope to use the data as the baseline for a bird census, eventually providing information about the health of birds, and, by extension, of other animals.

Already the bird count has turned up preliminary evidence of a U.S. invasion by winter finches from Canada, Wells said. Possible explanations include a southward search for food because of El Nino-related changes in weather patterns.

“It’ll be really interesting to see how this year fits into the big picture,” Wells said.

Organizers of this year’s count say they hope more people will participate each year as word of the project spreads.

Many birders in the San Fernando Valley didn’t participate this weekend, for instance, because news of the bird count arrived late and conflicted with a previously scheduled field trip to Morro Bay.

“Like anything brand new, it takes a while to get off the ground,” said Art Langton, who leads local Audubon Society members in the traditional Christmas bird count. He is missing this weekend’s count because of the field trip.

Indeed, even Polak-Recht had to squeeze her bird counting in around the hustle of a catered dinner party she was throwing later in the day.

But she didn’t mind making the time.

“This is an exciting morning,” she said.