Audubon observers find local bird count steady

Central Texas Audubon Society volunteer observers, joining a nationwide effort to count as many birds as possible in the Americas, found that birds in McLennan County probably matched last year's count of 32,323 pretty closely.

We had excellent weather with little wind, so the birds were flying and easy to spot,” count compiler E.G. White-Swift said. “We probably had fewer counters than last year ,but the conditions today tended to equalize the results.

He said coming up with final totals would take a few days.

Volunteers in six teams met early Saturday morning at White-Swift’s office at Equipment Depot of Waco and were assigned to cover tracts of land in a 15-mile radius of the confluence of Tehuacana Creek and the Brazos River, an area that includes most of Waco and a large area to the northeast.

They finished about 5 p.m. and turned in their counts.

Other participants met that morning at homes and then fanned out to make their counts.

“Most of our people have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, so they’re good at finding where the birds are,” he said.

They also are asked to identify the birds by species if they can, and last year they reported 119, according to the club’s records.

Some, like the common grackle, accounted for almost half the total, but only one or two will be recorded for many species.

McLennan County’s “circle” in the Christmas Bird Count was one of 60 in Texas.

The local society will send its results to the National Audubon Society, along with figures supplied by more than 70,000 volunteers from the Arctic to the southernmost tip of South America, to help determine where birds are moving and settling and how many are having trouble surviving, according to the society’s website.

In previous years, observations have shown that some migratory birds are stopping farther north in the winter, possibly due to global warming.

Others are moving far away from their usual range because climatic conditions have reduced their normal food supplies.

Central Texas Audubon Society president Janet Wallace said last year that a count in mid- December 2012 showed fewer than half the usual number of birds on the western side of the county.

As urban development expands, many birds have to search harder for unpopulated areas, White-Swift said.

“But development isn’t all bad,” he said. “The growing number of stock ponds is good for ducks, for example.”

The Audubon Society started the Christmas Bird Count in 1900 as an alternative to a holiday custom of competitive hunting in which the winning group was the one with the most birds killed, according to its website.

White-Swift said the local society has been active in the count since 1957. He said only three or four new people joined in this year’s local count.

“We need to recruit new people, because a lot of our volunteers are reaching the age when walking and watching all day is difficult,” he said.

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