It’s Almost Christmas

Here’s a wonderful Christmas tradition that you might have missed: the annual Christmas Bird Count or CBC. It is the oldest Citizen Science event in the world and wonderful holiday tradition.

The main goal of the Christmas Bird Count is to literally count the birds in the Northern-hemisphere in early winter for scientific purposes. However, the count is so much fun that most birders (and even some non-birders) make the CBC a traditional holiday activity.

Some interesting facts about the CBC:

• Annual event: Each year the birds of the North America are count during the Christmas holidays. This year annual bird count will begin December 14, 2008 and end January 5, 2009.
• Citizen science: The data collected will update what we know about how birds are doing in our region. Volunteers have collected the data for over a century.
• Open to anyone: Anyone can participate in this annual activity. You can be with your family or group of friends, you can be a student or a working individual, and you can have a medical degree or have a blue color job, it doesn’t matter what your status in life. You just need to have compassion for birds and the humor to count them at dawn and you’re good to go.
• Helps preserve birds: The census will help organizations preserve the birds in the community. Through this bird count they’ll have ideas on which birds are nearing the endangered species category and which are over-populating a region.

The original Christmas birding tradition in the 19th century involved killing birds and not counting them. This practice was observed for the long time until ornithologist Frank Chapman suggested that instead of killing birds, why not make a practice of preserving them. Thus the annual bird counting started.