The 113th Christmas Bird Count

December 14, 2012 through January 5, 2013

By Geoffrey S. LeBaron

What are the factors that add up to make a particular Christmas Bird Count even greater than usual?  Of course, every CBC season is special in many ways, and each count has its own highlights.  That’s part of the magic of the Christmas Bird Count, and a key factor in the program’s long-term success.  But some years there’s a little extra something that pushes a Count over the top and into the record books in more ways than one.

The 113th Christmas Bird Count was one of those special seasons.  Bird-wise, there were several notable large-scale events that livened things up in far-flung regions; a varied host of boreal seed-eating species flooded southward during the fall, Snowy Owls started moving for the second  year in a row, and an amazing seabird event was developing off the Southeastern coast.  Weather-wise, we were lucky; in the big picture, climactic conditions during the 113th Count period were just about average, and the lack of a big continental weather event was a positive for the count.  It wasn’t too hot or too cold…just right.  And the other big factor, the one that made this season unique among all Counts since 1956 was that the 113th Christmas Bird Count was free, with no participant fees to clutter up compilers’ duties or potentially inhibit counters from joining in.
 

The winter finch movement had begun in a big way during the fall of 2012, with hoards of Red-breasted Nuthatches and Pine Siskins heading southward by early November, followed by a spectacular movement of both Red and White-winged Crossbills, especially on the Northeastern coast.  In some areas mixed flocks of hundreds of crossbills were infesting coastal pine groves, sometimes landing on the cars, cameras, and even arms and heads of legions of ecstatic birders.  While boreal raptors did not make a large continental movement, Northern Shrikes began appearing to the south by mid-fall and Snowy Owls increased in the Pacific Northwest.  The stage was set for an exciting 113^th Christmas Bird Count.

The avian catalysts, combined with the widely publicized announcement of the elimination of the participant fee for field observers on the Christmas Bird Count produced an unprecedented increase in both the number of counts included in a CBC season as well as the number of observers reported on counts.  The 112th CBC's short-lived records fell in each category after just one year; the total number of counts increased by 121 from 2,248 in the 112^th Count to an astounding 2,369 counts in this 113^th season, while the number of observers increased from last season’s record 63,227 to break the 70K barrier at 71,531 in the 113^th Count!  Of those 2,369 circles, 1,849 were conducted in the United States, 417 in Canada, and 103 in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands.  We also had a record number of new circles included in the 113^th CBC; Table 1 lists this season’s 107 new counts.  In most CBC results for a given Count we expect between 30 and 40 new circles; the 107 new circles this year include many from Wisconsin and Minnesota that have been run for decades, but not submitted to Audubon.  We are thrilled to have all these “new” counts come onboard, and in the long term will include all their historical data in the cumulative online Christmas Bird Count database.

Table 1.  New counts in the 113^th (2012-2013) Christmas Bird Count

 Count                   Count Name

 Code

 CANADA

UNITED STATES

CARIBBEAN, LATIN AMERICA

(107 new counts)

Of the amazing new record total number of observers, the break-downs are as follows:  56,027 were in the United States (48,984 in the field plus 7,043 at feeders); 13,243 included from Canada (9,287 field observers plus 3,960 at feeders); and 2,257 counted in Latin America, Bermuda and the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands (2,200 in the field and 57 at feeders).

Don’t forget to have a look at the complete list of all Christmas Bird Count circles and their compilers that were included in the 113^th CBC; the link to the list is here:

http://birds.audubon.org/sites/default/files/documents/count_circles_-_code_-_compilers_for_the_113th_cbc_1.pdf

Many counts were highlighted by high participation numbers, rallying 100 or more observers in 70 circles this season. Table 2 documents the complete list of counts in the 113^th CBC that achieved or exceeded the century mark for number of observers.

Table 2.  Counts with 100 or more participants in the 113^th (2012-2013) CBC

Code        Count Name                                                                # Observers  (Field + Feeder)

Despite the major jump in number of counts and overall participation in the 113th Count, the total number of birds tallied was actually somewhat lower than average over the past several seasons, at 64,133,843 (59,909,567 birds in the United States, 3,750,851 in Canada, and 473,425 in Latin America, Bermuda and the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands).  This does not necessarily mean that bird numbers are declining, but rather that the large concentrations of birds that sometimes are tallied within a few Christmas Bird Count circles (roosts of blackbirds, starlings, robins, or crows) happened to be outside the areas that were covered this season.  This may have been a result of the relatively ice- and snow-free conditions over much of North America; with lots of welcoming habitat to occupy, birds did not necessarily need to be concentrated in the areas within CBC circles that are often considered to be most productive during harsher winter seasons.

The previous trend notwithstanding, many superb species totals were tallied during the 113^th Christmas Bird Count.  The highest total in the United States and Canada again was at Brent Ortego’s Matagorda County-Mad Island Marsh, Texas count at 232 species.  This total is lower than in some seasons past, largely due to inclement weather on count day and the ongoing severe drought in Texas.  To get a taste of what it’s like to be on the top count in North America, check out the video here  http://birds.audubon.org/videos/christmas-bird-count-coastal-texas.  In Latin America, top dog counts in Ecuador continue to challenge each other for high species honors.  Long-standing champion Mindo-Tandayapa, Ecuador was slightly bested again this season by Yanayacu, Ecuador—though of course many of the same participants attend each count!  This season, Yanayacu beat last year’s total by one with 493 species total; Mindo was hot on their heels at 455.  To check out all the counts with 150 or more species tallied this season, please see Table 3.

Table 3:  Counts with 150 or more species recorded in the 113th (2012-2013) CBC

Table 3a:  Counts north of the United States-Mexican border

Count             Rank       Count Name                                                                             Species

Code                                                                                                                               Recorded

Table 3b:  Counts south of the United States-Mexican border

Even though we have over 100 more CBCs than ever before included in the 113th Count, the total number of species tallied in the United States was lower than in most recent seasons, at 640 species and 48 infraspecific forms.  One primary reason for this lower number is the lack of the critical Northwestern Chain counts in Hawaii; a series of storms in the Pacific earlier in the season devastated the islands, and the facilities needed for staff to conduct the counts on the French Frigate Shoals, Midway Island, and Laysan Island were destroyed.  Thus those counts were not conducted in the 113th Count, and the amazing variety (and number) of seabirds and endemic species tallied only on those islands are not included in this season’s totals.  One species was added to the cumulative list of birds found on Christmas Bird Counts in the United States—Little Egret at Mid-Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  The only other report of this species on a CBC came from Bermuda back in the 1980s.  In Canada, 292 species were tallied across the country, including two new additions, the long-staying Citrine Wagtail at Comox, British Columbia and an amazing Scarlet Tanager at Williams Lake, British Columbia.  The Citrine Wagtail is a new addition to the overall CBC list, while Scarlet Tanager has been reported very few times before in North America—but frequently from the South American CBCs.

Of course there are over 100 counts conducted outside the borders of the United States and Canada, and the cumulative list of species on all counts climbs each season as more counts are included in new areas and countries each season.  We welcomed three new CBCs in Cuba this season, and for the first time ever the tiniest bird in the world—the Bee Hummingbird—was included in CBC results, along with many other wonderful species only found in Cuba.  These join the ever-growing list of endemic and highly range-restricted birds, many of which are highly threatened, that are tallied on CBCs each season from the far-flung Hawaiian Islands through the Caribbean to the mountain valleys of the Andes.  This season’s full species tally was a lofty 2,296 species, very slightly lower than the 2,298 recorded in last season’s 112th CBC.

While the ultimate goal of participating on a Christmas Bird Count is tallying a representative sample of the birds in the circle on count day, the natural competitive spirit of birders is what drives us to do the most thorough job possible.  Regional rivalries (as well as the drive to best our own count’s species total) add emphasis to the task.  Table 4 presents the list of CBCs attaining the highest regional species totals in the 113^th Christmas Bird Count—congratulations to one and all!

Table 4:  Regional high counts for the 113^th (2012-2013) CBC

     Region                               # of CBCs                                       Highest Count (species total)

And don’t forget to take a look at the 113th CBC Regional Summaries, now presented via a mapping interface and also as a list of links on the CBC website http://birds.audubon.org/113th-christmas-bird-count-alphabetical-index-regional-summaries .  Our team of CBC Regional Editors http://birds.audubon.org/programs/cbc/cbc-regional-editors does an amazing job, both reviewing counts and summarizing results from the varied areas included in each CBC season.  Without their expertise—and the eagle eyes of all Compilers—the database generated by all of us would be nowhere near as important as it has become.

On an overall continental basis, the weather during the 113th Christmas Bird Count was…well…pretty normal.  The Mid-Atlantic region and especially coastal New York and New Jersey had been battered by Superstorm Sandy in late October, and the lingering effects of that storm’s destruction negatively impacted some circles along the Eastern Seaboard.  Some regions, especially around the Great Lakes, were a bit warmer than usual while others including the Pacific Northwest and the Mid-Atlantic were cooler than usual— though as extreme weather events increase and our climate changes, usual is a term that seems to be less descriptive every year.  While storms impacted some counts in a few regions, overall this season was what we’ve come to expect as average weather in recent decades.  The deep drought continues in some areas of the south and west, though there are signs it may be abating slightly.  And the winter finch forecast published by Ron Pittaway in Ontario held promise for a range of boreal seed- and fruit-eating species moving away from their expected winter ranges.

And move they did—starting in mid-fall with a big flight of Red-breasted Nuthatches and Pine Siskins, followed by both Red and White-winged crossbills, then Common Redpolls and even fair number of Evening Grosbeaks.  The crossbills were especially prominent in the east, particularly along the coast, while siskins and Red-breasted Nuthatches pushed far south across much of the continent.  Pine Grosbeaks moved south in numbers in the Northeast and in the Pacific Northwest, Bohemian Waxwings showed especially good numbers in western Canada, and Purple Finches also vacated the northern latitudes for southern regions of North America.

It wasn’t anticipated that raptors would move, and most species like Gyrfalcon and Rough-legged Hawk were tallied in average numbers in expected locales.  But Snowy Owls undertook an echo flight after last year’s major influx, though the 113th Season’s flight was much more omnidirectional to the northern Great Plains, northern Rockies, and Pacific Northwest.  In fact, the number of Snowy Owls in some parts of the Northwest was even greater than last season’s flight.  It will be interesting to see what this magnificent Arctic predator does in the upcoming 114th CBC.

But even more extraordinary than the finches and Snowy Owls, was an unprecedented movement of Razorbills in huge numbers far south of their normal range off the East Coast of North America.  The Razorbill is an alcid (a puffin relative) of the North Atlantic, and breeds on cliffs and offshore islands in large colonies especially in the Atlantic Provinces, Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles and Northern Europe.  The normal wintering range in the western North Atlantic is at sea off the Atlantic Provinces and New England, with some found south to the Mid-Atlantic and Cape Hatteras.

Prior to the 113th CBC something major happened with Razorbills, apparently as a result of warming sea temperatures in the North Atlantic which depressed their usual piscine food supply.  Hungry Razorbills headed south—almost 1,000 miles farther south than normal—in tremendous numbers.  Prior to this past fall there were only 14 records of Razorbill in Florida; in the 113th CBC 20 different counts tallied Razorbill in the Sunshine State, including the Dry Tortugas near Cuba and Pensacola in the upper Gulf of Mexico.  The sixth highest tally of Razorbill in the 113th CBC was in Florida—an amazing 600 birds counted off the beaches of Miami on the Dade County count, nearly 1,000 miles away from their normal winter range!  Razorbills were also tallied on most coastal counts in North Carolina, plus South Carolina, Georgia, and even (as a count week species) all the way around to Gulf Shores, Alabama.

As spectacular as this was for birders in the Southeast, it may have indicated disaster for the Razorbills themselves.  Many birds getting that far south were probably food-stressed, and Razorbills were found moribund and captured for rehabilitation or washed up dead on beaches up and down the East Coast.  It’s unknown how many of these birds—if any at all—were able to return northward to their breeding grounds in the high North Atlantic for the summer of 2013.  The breeding success of Razorbills and many other alcids has been declining in recent years, mostly in response to declining supplies of the small fish needed to feed their nestlings as ocean temperatures rise.  Researchers are closely monitoring the productivity of many species of alcids in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, and Christmas Bird Count data are an integral part of understanding how these seabirds are faring in the non-breeding season.

And so we all set afield during the 113th Christmas Bird Count in anticipation of our own special sightings.  Back in Rhode Island we had a lovely day for our Newport-Westport census.  It was sunny and relatively warm, with little wind.  My first highlight of the day was, indeed, a Razorbill, seemingly comfortably cruising around close off the end of the breakwater my field partner Tom and I had hiked out too for our morning seawatch.  Razorbills are not all that unusual on this count, but it’s always a treat to spot one.

As with thousands of observers in many other areas our main hope was to catch a bit of the ongoing crossbill flight.  Local list serves had been alive with amazing first-hand reports of up-close-and-personal interactions with these boreal finches.  In mid-morning a gaggle of White-winged Crossbills twittered by at some distance—we tallied them for the count, but it wasn’t exactly the close encounter we’d anticipated.  We pressed on with our route, a Northern Harrier coursing over the fields and a gaggle of Harlequin Ducks offshore.  Despite the apparent lack of crossbills, it was certainly a nice place to count birds!

Then, there it was—“kip…kip kip…kip kip kip…”—Red Crossbills!  But where were they?  The piping stopped, and we resumed our search through the scattered pines with renewed intensity.  The birds finally magically appeared, mousing around in the cones of a small isolated pine tree in the middle of a field.  It’s amazing how cryptic a flock of brick-red and olive-green birds can be, but crossbills are famously tame and we were able to approach the tree to get a good count.  All the birds appeared to be adults, with more males present than females, and we recorded their voices for later identification of which types of Red Crossbills they were as categorized by their call notes.  We lingered with them for a bit, noting their behavior as they confidingly ignored our attention.  Suddenly, one female began quivering her wings, tail down and head up—an offer to a nearby male to initiate courtship feeding, and he accepted her invitation.  Courtship feeding wasn’t something we’d expected to see during the CBC, but we shouldn’t really have been surprised—crossbills can breed at any month of the year in any location where there is an abundant supply of cone seeds.  These birds moved on, however, off to the next seed-laden pine grove.

Did they move south from Rhode Island, or north, or disperse to the inland forests?  Did they end up nesting locally?  Who knows—in reality only the birds themselves do.  But by heading out for a day or so of careful birding on Christmas Bird Counts year after year we birders have become Citizen Scientists, and the growing combined pool of sightings we contribute helps researchers understand how the objects of our attention are faring in a way that Frank M. Chapman, the father of the Christmas Bird Count, could never have conceived of back in 1900.