Tufted Titmouse by Michele Black / Great Backyard Bird Count

CAS Board member John Elliott discusses Big Numbers in Chicagoland birding during Fall 2021 and discusses the Christmas Bird Count.

Some big numbers of birds and people who care about birds have been in the wind this fall. Of events recently passed, October 9th eBird big day was the most successful yet, total world wide numbers are stunning. Almost 33,000 people in 195 countries found 7269 species on 78,000 check lists in just one day. Thousands of photos and audio recordings were added to the Macaulay Library.

Nine CAS /Cook County Forest Preserve observers at Bemis Woods added 153 individuals of 16 species to the effort. Though that might seem insignificant its important to remember that every bit of effort can help researchers and conservationists that use the data. And we enjoyed a lovely morning. Read about it at eBird’s October Big Day 2021.

Big event soon: 122d Christmas Count

National Audubon's winter count really has been held every year since 1900. Last year saw a slightly reduced count effort due to Covid safeguards. The pre-Covid 120th count had almost 83,000 observers on 2646 counts. North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and northern South America were very well covered. National Audubon focuses effort on the Americas and some oceanic areas where “our” birds might go in winter.

The count circle with the largest number of species was one in Ecuador with 374. Their count of individuals, though, was not very high. In the US, Matagorda County TX, topped the list with 224 species. Over all, 40 million birds of over 2500 species were logged. The numbers are impressive but must be seen in context of the over all decline in far too many species of birds.

Helping out with Christmas counts, just as logging eBird reports, adds to the data so important for research. Counts are from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5. Find one of about a dozen northeast Illinois counts to join on National Audubon's web site or contact me or other local count compilers.

join the xmas bird count

For an excellent talk by National Audubon Christmas count coordinator Geoffrey LeBaron, visit the Chicago Ornithological Society YouTube channel.

Exciting big numbers of one species

Cornell Lab of Ornithology's autumn issue of Living Bird features the discovery of a stunning spring migration stop over in South Carolina. “Some 20,000 Whimbrels gather each night on Deveaux Bank during this migratory stopover, the largest such congregation known anywhere on the planet.” Deveaux Bank near Charleston, an ephemeral barrier island, is an over night resting area for half the Atlantic flyway population, and as many as a quarter of all whimbrels of North America. For a month in May the big shorebirds feed on fiddler crabs in tidal marshes and spend the night in relative safely on Deveaux Bank.

Big news indeed, but once more with a sobering perspective. Arthur Cleveland Bent, in 1929's Life Histories of North American Shorebirds, reported that hundreds of thousands of Whimbrels could be seen in a day during peak migration.