I once asked an ornithologist friend how birds who do not migrate in winter manage to stay warm. She said they fluff up and circulate air through their feathers. Since humans don't have this option, I was a little surprised to find myself leaving my cozy bed before sun-up one December morning to join a group of bird-watchers I had never met and spend a long day in the frozen countryside, counting bird species.
I began bird-watching when I lived in - of all places - Manhattan (where I learned that Central Park is a superb haven for migrating birds). I brought that interest with me when I moved with my husband and children to Pennsylvania and, on that December morning, I joined the Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count.
The lure of birds has always been difficult to resist and that attraction, I am told, pulled men from their tables following their dinners on Christmas Day, 1900. The early roots of the bird count go back even further but, as the story goes, these men divided themselves into teams and set out, inspired by the popular and relatively new invention - the binocular - to see which team could identify and record the greatest number of birds. This was the first Christmas Bird Count. The Audubon Society has held the bird count annually ever since, with the competition aspect removed, because the various bird species tend to distribute themselves in consistent patterns and any change in those patterns can be an early indicator of a change in the environment.
During two weeks each December, thousands of volunteer bird-watchers across North America and in various spots around the globe - professional scientists and amateur birders alike - take a census of the species and individual birds to be found in a 24-hour period. Participants work within a seven-and-a-half mile radius of a location the Audubon Society designates for each group.
On this winter day, I was the least skilled, though by no means the least enthusiastic, birder in our group of seven. We waited with the patience of predators, each swathed in wooly layers of clothing and draped with binoculars. The others had an uncannily keen ability to hear the sounds of owls. The distant calls were faint, and I would never have recognized most of them as owl calls. My companions, however, were so attuned that they could determine which was the Common Screech Owl and which the Great Horned Owl. They were even able to distinguish between individual owls of the same species by differences in pitch! (Birds that are "heard only" are recorded in the census when the birders are this competent.) Five owls were deemed not a bad morning's work as we ran out of darkness and misty daylight revealed a potpourri of waterfowl on Harvey's Lake: American Coots, Mergansers, Canvasbacks, a Grebe, and scads of Mallards.
Land birds have always been my favorites and in the afternoon, when a flock of Chickadees gathered in the trees by a dirt road, that is when I felt most at home. This was the first species I learned to identify when I began bird-watching. As we made note of these common birds (often described as "small, tame acrobats"), I enjoyed my close-up of their clean little black-capped heads, black bibs, white cheeks, and the pert angle of their starchy tails.
I once heard someone say that bird-watching is a passive pursuit, but nothing could be further from the truth. Bird-watching in any season requires the seeker to be wily. As fast as the bird may be, I must be faster. It is an act of "capture" in which the reward is often an intimate glimpse of elusive, extraordinary beauty - like the first time I went birding alone and got a long gaze at a Yellow Shafted Flicker. Its color-blocked head and spotted breast were perfectly framed by a large knothole in a tree trunk; for that minute or so time seemed suspended. I wondered if any other person ever had - or anyone ever would again - savor the loveliness of that individual Flicker.
I love the mysteries to be solved in bird identification. Calls, songs, behavior, markings, size and silhouette are all clues - the difference between one species and another is sometimes no greater than the color of a line extending from a tiny eye. Bird-watching is also a form of collecting. The Hooded Merganser and American Coot we spotted on the lake that pre-Christmas day became entries on my "life list" as birders call it: They were the first of their species I had ever seen, so the date of their sightings became part of my personal record.
Nine hours later, I returned home with red cheeks and numbed toes. My team had found 34 species and 3,312 individual birds. And I knew that I had taken part in the ongoing effort to understand our complex relationship with the beauty and mystery of nature.