119th Annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC), by Carolyn Vance
Join El Dorado Audubon on Saturday, December 15th for the 119th Annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC)!
Started in 1900 by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early officer of the National Audubon Society, he got 27 of his birding friends to go out and count birds, instead of shooting them as was the custom back then. That first CBC netted 90 species and 25 Count Circles. The 117th Count had 2,536 Count Circles and 73,153 participants in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the longest running citizen science survey in the world!
If you have participated in CBC with El Dorado Audubon in the past, you should have received our reminder card. If you haven’t, you can pick one up at our General Meeting. Donna Bray will be making assignments for us this year. Please let her know if you want a specific area. Her contact information is 562-743-6399 (cell) or 562-863-7617. I will be doing the tallying again this year.
If Donna Bray hasn’t preassigned you an area, meet me (Carolyn Vance) at the south end of the El Dorado Branch Public Library on Studebaker no later than 7:30 a.m. to get Count Sheets and Assignments. Don’t forget your binoculars, spotting scopes (if you have one), field guide, pen/pencil, hat, water, Thomas Bros. map or GPS. We count rain or shine. We also need people to count at their feeders.
Afterwards, we meet at Glory Days Beachside, 620 Pacific Coast Hwy, Seal Beach, starting at 4:30 p.m. for dinner and recap. You may turn your Count Sheets to me then. If you submit you records through eBird, please share your list with me at drabduck@yahoo.com and mark it as El Dorado’s CBC. All data, whether physical Count Sheets or shared eBird records, need to be to me no later than Friday, December 21st. If you need my address to snail mail sheets to me, email me or call 562-594-7589.
When you get to Glory Days Beachside, go in the door (on the side of the building) and turn left. Go into the room at the end. They have servers who will come in and take our orders, deliver it to us and a full bar. The menu has a large selection of items. I should (hopefully!) be there already. CBC is great fun and you’ll be hooked on it once you do it. Thank you for your help this year!
Post photo credit: Cindy Crawford (photo taken at a past CBC)
