Christmas Bird Count

Count the partridge; leave the pear tree.

- Buster Wolfe

When Christopher King sees a partridge in a pear tree around Christmastime, he takes his time to put it on a list. Later that day, he will check it twice.

King, who proudly accepts the moniker “Bird Nerd,” is president of the National Audubon Society’s Jackson chapter. Between December 14 and January 5, King and his birding aficionados will participate in the society’s annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) in the capital city area.

While the national and state Audubon Societies coordinate policies, the local chapters are tasked with the legwork. “We link up with National for the Christmas Bird Count and the Great Backyard Bird Count,” King says. “It is up to the chapters to put on the CBC because it takes local birding knowledge to know where to put the circle, know how to bird the circle, and that type of thing. The difficult side of it is knowing there are things you can’t control that affect what kind of count you get, like the weather.”

Each circle of land that will be observed for 24 hours is 15 miles wide and is divided into sectors. “You have one person in charge of each sector, and they take other counters along with them,” he says. “My sector is usually very, very heavy with waterfowl. Last year, about five or six days before the count, we had a warm snap. There were just no ducks. Normally, my duck numbers were (species-wise) around 15 or 20 species into the thousands of numbers. After the warm front, I had two species and maybe 100 ducks. It was just all about the weather.”