Birding Agawam for the Christmas Bird Count

We are at the end of ten years, a hundred years, and a thousand years. The cycle of one single year is important to life, but is there some special significance to reaching a thousand of them? Almost certainly not, except it takes a lot to impress us these days, and we do need to recognize the importance of the end of each and every year.

The natural year ends here in the northern hemisphere on December 21, the time of the winter solstice. Our most important celebrations of the year come at this time only because the days are short, the sun is low, and natural life is cold and dormant. The solstice is the limit of that cold, when the sun stops it flight away from us and the miracle of its return is cause for awe and joy.

Sometimes we get carried away with these celebrations. In the 19th century our frontier forefathers indulged in the "side hunt," forming teams of shooters to go out into the still rural countryside and bag as many small birds and animals as they could. The count of dead game in the bag would then determine the winner of this contest.

A hundred years ago a man named Frank Chapman celebrated by asking friends to venture out in the field on Christmas Day, 1900 to just count birds rather than shoot and count them. The Allen Bird Club of Springfield held such a count last Saturday, as it has done every year since early in the century.

Within a 15-mile diameter circle, a party of counters has a certain section to census. My section has been the eastern and southern part of Agawam for the last thirty years. Would you like to come along to celebrate the 100th annual Christmas count?

There are a few night-loving birders who start their census at 12 midnight, but I was at the first stop at 4:00 a.m. If you play a recording of a screech owl, you will get a response if there is one in the neighborhood, and there were two such replies out of 12 attempts until dawn. At one place, a great horned owl called on its own.

The finest part of the day is dawn, and from a hilltop in Agawam the entire skyline of Springfield with a backdrop of the Wilbraham mountains was visible. A cloud bank rested above the hills and was tinted everywhere with reds and pinks. A red-tailed hawk sat in a tree and a northern harrier flew into view, both scanning the ground below for food.

This first walk, through woods and fields, took three hours and produced 27 more species of birds. You can probably guess at many of the them, the common woodpeckers, chickadees, jays, finches, and sparrows. These are regular species in the wintry New England landscape, and are present almost anywhere you may walk.

Perhaps surprising to some, but not unexpected to the winter walker, were the thirty or so robins found brightening the trees with their red breasts. When disturbed they chuck their loud protesting call note and flick their tails in defiance. "Don't interrupt when we are dining on rose hips and sumac seeds," they seem to say.

There was a lingering flicker in residence and one of the northern shrikes that are visiting from the North this winter, but the usual bluebirds did not appear. Instead, a Carolina wren belted out his full ringing song from across the field, more merry than a carol sung by a choir. Later, on the other side of the fields, streams of blackbirds flew overhead, delayed in their southward migration by the snowless ground.

Later in the day, the run along the river brought several ducks and gulls. Along the stream next to Riverside Park, a kingfisher rattled his alarm from a perch on an overhanging branch. At a brushy spot near the river, a swarm of nearly a hundred cedar waxwings sat on a bare tree in the open. Clad in their gaudy wine and yellow colors, they shone like ornaments on a holiday tree.

What better way to celebrate the holy day that marks the end of a year. A day that in the midst of winter forecasts its end and reminds us of the resiliency of life.