House Wren
As I write this column we are right in the middle of the annual three-week Christmas Bird Count period, the 2022 edition. The St Lucie Audubon-sponsored count has already been held and presumably all the reports are in.
It seems that I have been participating in Christmas Bird Counts for most of my life, at least my adult life. The first Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Christmas Bird Count was held in 1968 but I was not aware of it until after reading reports about it in the newspapers. Consequently, my first Christmas Bird Count was in 1969. Within a year or two I was participating in all three Bucks County counts, Upper, Central and Lower Bucks, in which I continued participating right up until the time we began spending winters in Fort Pierce. For more than 30 years it was my pleasure to serve as the compiler for the Upper Bucks County count where our farm was, and still is, just south of the center of the count area.
My first St Lucie Audubon count was in 2010, the first year Jewel and I began spending the Christmas season in Florida instead of heading north to spend the Thanksgiving through New Year period with family. Jewel and I were paired with Billy Wagner and Tim Towles, two of the most accomplished birders on the entire Treasure Coast, as we were then apparently unknown quantities as to our birding skills even though we had birded extensively with Dottie Hull, a Port St Lucie birder well known and regarded statewide in Florida, and we had led many field trips for St Lucie Audubon by that time.
When we began our Christmas Bird counts many years ago it was not unusual to be up at 2 a.m. and be out searching for owls. It was not uncommon to find many Screech, Great Horned and Long-eared Owls before the sun even rose. Then at the end of the day, after dark, we would go out again into areas we had not covered in the morning to search for even more owls. Here in St Lucie County in the early days of our CBC participation we would do the same thing, although never as early in the morning or ever after dark in the evening, much preferring to attend the annual CBC pizza party sponsored by St. Lucie Audubon. Now as we have aged, nine hours of daylight birding is about our limit.
Similarly, Christmas Bird Count birding itself has changed. For example, in those early days all of the preparation for the count had to be by corded telephone or snail mail. Now preparations are done by email, text, and only the occasional cell phone call. Recording is transcribed while birding on paper lists prepared on a computer and scanned to a computer for email to the compiler.
Even in the field if a birder has a Merlin app on his or her phone it is possible to listen for birds the app is hearing that might not be heard or recognized by the birder. While birds recorded on the app may not be counted, the app certainly alerts the birder of the presence of a bird for which to search most diligently. This was well illustrated for Jewel and me on this count as Merlin alerted us to look particularly hard for the House Wren (top) that we eventually found and were able to photograph.
While doing the Christmas Bird Count one of the most fun and gratifying aspects of the annual search is the hope to find an unusual species that, while not necessarily rare, might be uncommon or unusual here in our particular area of the count. For example, in 2012 Jewel found a Merlin (photo 2) in her area; and in 2018 she found a Gray-headed Swamphen (photo 3) and contacted me while still completing my area and urged me to come get a photo of it for documentation. Gray-headed Swamphens have become common at places like the Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area north of Felsmere, STA 5 south of Clewiston, Lakeside Ranch and now even at Green Cay, but they are still pretty rare in St Lucie County.
Another unusual but not rare bird is this Yellow-throated Warbler (photo 4) we found in 2020 in PGA Village. This year, in addition to the House Wren we found an unusual Spotted Sandpiper (photo 5) along with three Least Sandpipers in a drawn-down pond with extensive exposed sandy shoreline, and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (photo 6) feeding in a beautiful Orchid Tree which tree species we have subsequently learned is not native to Florida.
Of course, it is always fun to see and photograph more common species such as this juvenile Little Blue Heron (photo 7), this pair of Mottled Ducks (photo 8) showing particularly well the different bill coloring of the male (yellowish on the left) and the female (bright orange on the right) and this collection of three species together, an adult Little Blue Heron, Roseate Spoonbill and Woodstork (photo 9).
The annual Christmas Bird Count began all the way back in 1900 at a time when Christmas day was a day that hunters went out to see how many birds they could kill whether they used the dead carcasses or not. Ornithologist Frank Chapman started the Christmas Bird Count to change the dynamic from killing to counting and from there the annual ritual has expanded tremendously. The count now serves to document how most species are doing from year to year. And yes, the count does document how the numbers of birds have declined over the years as the number of people in the population has increased.
We don’t have to travel far, particularly here in Florida, to see how much habitat has been lost to new housing as developments seem to be springing up before our very eyes. Also the birds now have to worry about invasive predators such as pythons, iguanas and others who just love to feast on birds’ eggs and young birds. Birds are literally our canaries in the coal mine telling us that our mine is going to collapse if we don’t do something about it. It is hard to understand why we are so resistant to such a clear warning. Maybe if we are lucky Congress will find a solution. Anyone want to bet on that one?
