Prior to 1900, hunters engaged in a holiday tradition called the Christmas ‘Side Hunt’. Groups would choose sides and go afield to see which side could bring in the biggest pile of furred and feathered quarry. On Christmas day 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman, an officer in the then nascent Audubon society, proposed that they go afield and count birds rather than kill them. He and twenty-nine other birders conducted twenty-five bird counts across the United States. Every year since, between December 15 - January 5, in what has grown to thousands of sites in which tens of thousands of people participate, is now known as the Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count (CBC). This year, 2023-2024, is the 124th year and is the oldest running citizen science project in North America.
The Cole Camp area, because of its diverse habitats of prairies, lakes, woodlands/forests, pas-tures and crop fields, is considered an Audubon IBA (important bird area). On December 27, 2023, we conducted our 15th annual CBC. Each site across the United States is a circle with a 15 mile diameter. The center of our area is located on Drover’s Prairie, just west of the intersec-tion of highways 65 and 52 forming a circle with a radius of 7.5 miles.
This is the seventh year Ryan Steffens, a Missouri Master Naturalist and Missouri Department of Conservation employee from Cole Camp, has coordinated the logistics for our count. We survey the same area each year which is divided into eight sections. Ryan assigns personnel to each section providing them with maps and data sheets. Each group has at least one experi-enced birder. With the help of binoculars and spotting scopes, the goal is to count every bird and to identify each species seen in all sections from dawn to dusk.
My wife, Kim, and I are assigned each year to section 1A which is north of Highway 52 and west of Highway E. By dusk, we had been out 9.25 hours, traveled 58 miles, counted 3,075 in-dividual birds, and identified 44 different species.
This year we had 11 birders in the field and one watching a bird feeder in Cole Camp. We had birders from Warsaw, Russellville, Missouri Department of Conservation offices in Lee’s Sum-mit and Jefferson City, Cole Camp and Knob Noster. Each group’s recorded data from their section was turned into Ryan, who compiled information submitting it to the Audubon Society.
The total number of birds for this year’s count was 28,044 with a total of 69 different species which was up four species from last year.
One of the most noticeable absences in last year’s survey was the lack of American robins. This year showed a rebound of 4,893 robins in the survey site. Another sad count last year was the Eastern bluebird with all sections reporting a combined total of only 24 bluebirds. This year, in our section, Kim and I counted 44 bluebirds with a remarkable total count of 321 for the whole area. Noted were three unusual species in the survey: a northern shrike, a prairie falcon and a spotted towhee.
Our data, along with data from other counts across the state and nation, will be compiled and compared to past surveys to obtain a long term view of the health and status of bird populations in North America and provide a picture of how the continent’s bird populations have changed in time and space. The long term perspective is vital for conservationists to protect birds and their habitats and help identify environmental issues.
Almost all our native bird species are in decline, some perilously so, especially grassland spe-cies. The biggest contributing factors are fragmentation and loss of habitat, followed by chemical use that directly affects birds or moves up the food chain also affecting bird populations.
“Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.”
-Roger Tory Peterson
