Pittsburgh isn’t exactly the bird capital of world, but its volunteers who count birds for the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count are ranked as the 10th largest group of counters in more than 2,600 count areas.
Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count is the largest citizen survey in the country that measures long-term changes in bird populations.
“We definitely have great and active support in Western Pa.,” said Chandler Lennon, a national Audubon Society spokesman.
The Audubon Society conducts bird counts in North America and portions of Central and South America.
Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, and Portland, Oregon, attracted the most volunteers, 482 and 346 respectively, for the 2018-2019 bird count. Pittsburgh, with its 245 volunteers, bested Denver, Washington, D.C., Santa Barbara, California, and elsewhere.
“It’s a matter of doing a good job of coordinating people and the word getting out in the media and social media,” said Brian Shema, operations manager for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania and compiler for the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count.
The local Audubon Society is calling for volunteers again to count those chickadees, cardinals, robins, bald eagles and anything else on the wing for the 120th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count held Saturday, Dec. 28, in the Buffalo Creek Valley area and Jan. 4 in southern Butler County.
The number of volunteers grows each year, according to Shema.
A good reason why the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count ranks high for attracting volunteers is the general interest in nature from residents, Shema said. Audubon’s Western Pennsylvania chapter is among the top five out of 420 chapters in the country in offering public programs, membership and staff, according to Shema.
For decades, the Pittsburgh count has always been held on the Saturday following Christmas. That might be another reason that participation is high because people always know the date when making holiday plans months in advance, Shema said.
Audubon keeps making it easier for newbies to count. The organization offers up a bird count warm-up to learn and practice bird identification to the public before the count. This year’s warm-up sessions are done. However, new participants with no experience in birdwatching will be paired with experienced ones for the count, Shema said.
And those who don’t want to brave the elements in the field can provide much needed feeder counts, which provides data on private property. Most of the survey is conducted at parks, greenways and along waterways with public access.
Bird count areas are all 15 miles in diameter. Volunteers have 24 hours to count birds. Count dates vary by location, but they all fall within a three-week period from mid-December through January.
And no, they don’t count all of the birds.
“We count only a small percentage of birds,” said Shema. “But our data is expressed in the total number of birds found per participant hour, which puts math to it.”
The survey numbers are plugged into formulas to take in a number of factors, including weather and available food for the birds.
Even when the weather is bad, which is a good possibility in the winter, “people do a good job when they say they will participate,” Shema said. “They might not spend as much time, but they come out.”
