For me, this was indeed a memorable count, but certainly not the only one. I reminisced about the 80 or more CBCs I’ve conducted over the years and came up with a few particularly memorable ones that I hope you might also find of interest.
Back around 1972, I helped organize the first Itasca State Park CBC. I’ll never forget how that began. I’d spent the previous night in a lower bunk bed in a friend’s place near the park. I was rudely awakened in near total darkness by their blind pet rooster crowing next to my head. Quite the heart-stopping alarm!
The count itself was also memorable because the actual temperature that day began at -48 degrees and peaked at -24. But birds were out and active, their sounds magnified in the frigid temperatures. I was lucky to find a golden eagle that day, along with many winter finches.
As a teenager in the late 50s, I volunteered for the Old Lyme, Conn. CBC. This was very special and exciting for me as a young bird devotee because it was coordinated by Roger Tory Peterson, the guru of birding in those days and the author of the first complete identification guide to North American birds, illustrated with his paintings. It poured rain all day but, again, the birds didn’t seem to mind. We had an enjoyable spaghetti dinner and tally at Peterson’s residence, and he showed us some of the new bird paintings he was working on.
During much of my professional life I was in Maryland and worked many of the local CBCs, often several in a given count period. My favorites were the counts on the eastern shore, where wintering waterfowl and some shorebirds were usually abundant. One in Crisfield was particularly memorable because we awakened to a frozen-over Chesapeake Bay, the only time that happened in my entire career there. That hurt our tally of waterbirds, of course, but there were still plenty of wintering land birds to keep our interest up throughout the day.
On another Maryland CBC I recall our small group returning to the car after some time in the field only to find ourselves without car keys – a fatal problem on most days. But on this day, there was enough snow cover (not common there) that we were able to retrace our steps about a quarter mile and finally discover the keys waiting for us along the trail.
A CBC favorite of mine, in which I participated twice, is the Beltrami Island State Forest CBC, north of Red Lake. I have always had a passion for the northern birds and this place is about as boreal as it gets in Minnesota. Typical species difficult to find elsewhere are the absurdly tame great gray owls, boreal chickadees and spruce grouse. The Beltrami CBC is a real wilderness experience.
Finally, fast-forwarding to this past CBC, it will always stand out as one of the worst I’ve experienced. Picture a bleak, flat landscape of Arizona desert scrub suffering from extreme drought (resulting in little food available for wintering birds). Add to this 40 mph winds and you have a recipe for a moonscape. My tally for three hours in the field was eight individual birds (three being fly-overs) of only four species, my record low for any CBC.
But you can be sure I’ll be back for more next year because CBCs get into the blood of birders like myself. Trying for the most species you can find in a day is strangely addictive. The anticipation is no doubt much like that felt by deer hunters every year. You may not get that buck, but you’ll surely be back next year to try again.
Marshall Howe is a retired biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He specialized in bird population studies. Howe has been a Park Rapids resident since 2010.
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BIRDWISE: A Christmas Bird Count memoir - Park Rapids Enterprise
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