Yearly Counting Ritual Brings Out the Birders

Picnickers at Irvine Regional Park last weekend were treated to a curious sight: four fine specimens of that subspecies known as “birders” peering skyward for the first Sunday of the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.

Hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders -- the usual winter weekend warriors in Southern California’s national forest and regional parks -- are being joined for a few Sundays this month by bands of birders, recognizable by their often drab chest covering, bright headgear, and sturdy, waterproof shoes.

Sunday at the park in northeastern Orange County, 64-year-old Curtis Johnson, in his faded military camouflage hat festooned with pins from birding trips around the world, was making the “psh-psh” call favored by avian aficionados.

With him were Paul Klahr, 71, of Laguna Woods, a flash of teal turtleneck showing under his black pullover, and Jason Bock, 54, of Brea, hopping excitedly with field guide in hand, ready to record a sighting.

Jeff Boyd had come too. Bleary and unshaven, the 51-year-old from Long Beach protested he’d given up birding since yuppies took over -- until a wing flap or a caw caught his ear, then his binoculars swung up by reflex.

This is a man who’s had his car stolen from a South Texas bird sanctuary parking lot, who has missed Christmas dinner while attempting a personal best bird count, a man who can lay claim to having been the first birder to spot the rare field sparrow in mainland California. Other birders treat Boyd with awe and affection.

“I’ve seen him call birds in from the sky like magic,” Bock said. “They come right to him.”

The men had gathered to engage in an annual ritual that began more than a century ago, on Christmas Day, 1900, when 27 conservationists in 25 U.S. localities started an alternative to holiday hunting practice.

In the “side hunt,” as it was known, teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small animals.

Ornithologists decided to count the birds they saw instead, unwittingly creating one of the enduring citizen-based conservation efforts.

Since that day, birders across the United States have mixed among their Christmas turkeys and other holiday trimmings an outdoor excursion to list all the birds they can see in a 24-hour period within a 15-mile radius.

Those circles now stretch from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego in South America. And the “Christmas” Bird Count now occurs in any 24-hour window between mid-December and early January.

More than 56,000 observers participated in nearly 2,000 circles last year.

One of the Golden State’s hot spots, surprisingly, is Orange County. It ranks near the top of bird-watching lists nationally and statewide, although development in formerly remote areas has led to the elimination of numerous species.

“We haven’t seen a common murre in years,” Johnson, a retired automotive cost analyst from La Palma, said mournfully.

Still, with Newport Bay, Bolsa Chica and Huntington Beach wetlands along the coast, and the relatively undisturbed northern portions of the Irvine Ranch abutting the Cleveland National Forest in the Santa Ana Mountains, more than 300 species usually are recorded in Orange County each year.

The quartet at Irvine Regional Park, near the remnant rural edge of Orange County, were men with lifelong bird species counts of 500 and more. They earned those counts the old-fashioned way -- on foot -- not from fancy helicopters with high-powered telescopes.

Johnson, 64, has been doing Christmas counts for half a century, since he was a boy in Pennsylvania. He holds the coveted title of compiler, the one who gathers the hand tallies and assembles Orange County’s master list to be submitted to the national organization by Jan. 5.

It will be merged with numbers from Belize to Bakersfield and Boston. The data are published and used by scientists who study bird population trends throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Up before dawn, Orange County’s birders spent Sunday in the inland areas, traipsing remote boulder-filled canyons and ducking barbecuing suburbanites, in search of everything from wrentits to golden eagles.

Conversation with the birders was a fluttery affair, punctuated by cries of “Oh, here come the robins!” and the sudden upsweep of binoculars to eyeglasses, the intent, long stare, and the satisfied murmurs of a positive identification.

“That’s a fox sparrow. That’s our best of the day,” said Victor Leipzig quietly, pointing to a brown and white blob perched on a toyon sugar bush halfway up the steep flanks of Harding Canyon, deep in the Cleveland forest.

A minute later, a squishy burbling followed by serious thrashing of dry leaves erupted in a smaller bush.

“Sounds like a whoopee cushion,” said Mary Joseph, 56, of Fountain Valley, who was on her first bird count.

“I’d describe it as an unmusical squawk,” said Leipzig, 54, a longtime biology professor from Huntington Beach. “That’s a spotted towhee, and it’s a very unattractive sound for such a pretty little bird.”

They stood still for several minutes, as the sun broke through on the rumpled, chaparral green hills, and the air filled with a symphony -- or cacophony, depending on your point of view -- of birdsong.

Yellow rumped warblers divebombed, their calls growing louder the faster they flew. A western scrub jay emitted chainsaw-like screeches.

An impossibly tiny Anna’s hummingbird pirouetted past a high tree branch, its wings whirring. Far overhead, a raven floated silently by. Joseph recorded them neatly in pencil on her improvised clipboard -- a square of corrugated cardboard with a sheet of paper secured by a rubber band.

From a tangle of tree and brush came the unmistakable tap-tap of a woodpecker. They’d seen plenty of acorn woodpeckers already on the road, but this one might be a rarer Lewis’ woodpecker. There was no way to tell for sure, though, unless they saw it.

For several minutes they loitered, but the bird had ceased its labors. No luck up the creek either, where Leipzig searched in vain for a rare canyon wren in a rock face above clear running water.

They did, however, spot five species of owls before dawn, including the shy long-eared owl, which looks like it got caught in a funhouse mirror, its head and ears oddly long and skinny.

Johnson shook his head sadly as the day’s counting ended. Sunday’s numbers were down from last year -- way down.

“Too many people, and not enough rain; way too many people,” he groused, pointing with his chin to new homes packed tightly on a ridge visible across the park.

“It’s incredibly depressing,” Johnson said.

But he’ll be back out with the others this weekend for the coastal count, ignoring the honking cars on busy Pacific Coast Highway, savoring the wheeling gulls and swooping pelicans.