Tallying the Springfield Christmas Bird Count 2000

It is time for birders to venture out on another Christmas hunt. On Christmas day the hunters of old spent the morning in the field, shooting everything that moved in their sights, especially the birds. Wings could not outrun the deadly shot, and the take was heavy in those days.

At lunch there was a feast with ample libation as the laden bags were opened and the bounty dumped and counted for all to see. Doves and jays and woodpeckers were counted and compared to see who could boast of being the day's best shot. Eventually this long tradition was ended by widespread revulsion, and modern hunting replaced it.

Today the tradition of the Christmas hunt is still carried on with the same essential weapons of arms and legs and eyes as well as knowing where the game may be found. Of course, we do not celebrate this Audubon event on Christmas day. We get to choose any day from mid-December until early January, and it is usually on a weekend.

Hundreds of birders go into the field throughout the state, starting at dawn or before and laboring until dusk, supposedly for science. However, we too gather with a feast to share the day's catch with others, each team of two or more having sampled and censused the birds of a particular assigned area within a count circle fifteen miles across.

Each team has a checklist of about seventy probable species that can be present on a New England December day. If any rare bird is found, its identity is guarded carefully until after the meal. Instead, we talk in general of the weather, and laugh as we relive some of the day's trials and minor triumphs.

After dinner we circle round the compiler and report our numbers and our rarities, warmed anew by the appreciative murmurs and hurrahs of all. Among the seventy species tallied on the Springfield area count were eight not even on the list, and two hardly ever encountered, a grebe and a warbler.

There were water birds, usually found on the larger lakes or rivers that may still be unfrozen. Canada geese, black ducks and mallards are common, but a hundred or more each of the wilder goldeneyes and mergansers are also present.

Three species of scavenging gulls were noted by the hundreds, and a handful of kingfishers still patrolled the stream banks. On the Connecticut River from Holyoke to Agawam, the counters also found a Barrow's goldeneye, pied-billed grebe, snow goose, gadwall, and bufflehead, each one announced with a special story and a measure of pride.

We went on to tell of hawks and owls. Every team had several of the common red-tailed hawks, and one even managed ten of them. All together, we discovered only a few each of sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper's hawks, and kestrels, plus two harriers and a merlin, both quite rare in winter. There were fewer than ten screech owls responding to tape recordings of their night calls, and only a few great horned owls gave out a hoot.

Five species of woodpeckers were listed, even a few of the spectacular pileated woodpeckers, always a prize. There were the usual permanent resident songbirds, the doves, jays, crows, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, creepers, kinglets, mockingbirds, sparrows and finches.

Added to these were one or two individuals of species that are hardy, but not usually hardy enough to spend the winter so far north, such as the winter wren, hermit thrush, catbird, pine warbler, towhee, fox sparrow, red-winged blackbird and grackle. There were two wandering red crossbills, the only northern species recorded.

Finally, there are the three fruit eating species, the waxwing, bluebird, and robin. Most teams found at least a few of these, but my team searched for bluebirds in vain. We were compensated, however, by the massive flock of hundreds of robins that surrounded us on an Agawam hillside.

These birds flew from one ice covered bush and tree to another, their rusty bellies warming the gray and white of sky and earth. Many of the robins sang boldly to each other as they waited a turn at the frozen berries, heralding both the approaching solstice and the not-too-distant spring. Hunting and counting birds for Christmas is more than science, it is a song to the promise of tomorrow.