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Christmas Bird Count |
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For the dedicated winter bird lover, there are annual winter bird counts now through the first week of January. Hundreds of volunteers in northeastern Illinois are recording the birds they find within 15-mile diameter counting circles. It’s part of the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count throughout North and South America.
The 2009 Count will take place this year on December 20. A few volunteers will start out in the very early morning and join with Kurt Dreisilker, the Arboretum’s Manager of Natural Resources, to go owling. Then, the count lasts at the Arb for most of the rest of the day. If experienced birders are interested, they should contact Kurt at 630-725-2093 office or kdreisilker@mortonarb.org.
Results from last year’s Lisle-Arboretum Christmas Bird Count on December 14 showed that 80 different kinds of birds were recorded, including one that was never sighted before, the horned grebe, according to Geoffrey Williamson, circle compiler for the Lisle-Arboretum count. “The count went really well. That’s only the fourth time in 60 counts that we’ve found 80 species or more.” There were record high sightings for bald eagles, brown creepers and common mergansers.
Eastern bluebirds are increasing in numbers at the Arboretum, according to a monitoring program at the Arboretum. With more than 100 bluebird houses and properly-managed open space and natural areas, the eastern bluebird has done remarkably well, preferring remote areas of the museum’s tree collections that are not mowed very often, says Kurt Dreisilker, the Arboretum’s manager of natural resources. But elsewhere, the bluebird, a savanna species, has declined over time as savannas waned.
The Christmas Bird Count is used to estimate bird species populations and see patterns in bird life over time, said Williamson, a Chicago resident who also leads bird watching outings in Lincoln Park for the Chicago Ornithological Society.
Other local counts include the December Chicago Urban Count and the Chicago Lakefront Count. According to the National Audubon Society, more than 57 million birds were reported in the 2007 Christmas Bird Count.
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