Hunger Mountain Winter Bird Count happens Dec. 27

December 18, 2024  |  By Zac Cota 

A grosbeak feeds on berries. Photo by Zac Cota

Each winter, birdwatchers across the Americas don their binoculars to scour their hometowns,  documenting and enjoying resident winter birds. This annual tradition, over a century old, has become a powerful tool for understanding the rise and fall of bird populations over time.

The Winter Bird Count (also called the Christmas Bird Count) was created as a peaceful alternative to a traditional yuletide hunt wherein teams competed to kill the most animals in an afternoon. In Enosburg Falls, the participants of this “side hunt” collected a bevy of over 550 birds and mammals in 1896. In response to this tradition, founder Frank Chapman announced “a new kind of Christmas side hunt in the form of a Christmas bird census.”

Today, 125 years later, more than 60,000 birders participate in this census annually, contributing to the world’s longest-running community science project. The Winter Bird Count has contributed to hundreds of scientific publications and is considered one of the 24 major indicators of climate impacts by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The effort now is managed by the National Audubon Society, with individual counts taking place in a three-week period from Dec. 14 until Jan. 4. Each count covers a 15-mile diameter circle, and attempts to document every single bird in that circle area during the 24 hours from midnight to midnight.

This year the Hunger Mountain Winter Bird Count will take place in the Waterbury-Stowe area on Friday, Dec. 27. You can help by joining a bird-counting team in your neighborhood, or even from the comfort of your own home by tallying birds visiting backyard feeders. Keeping your bird feeders full in the days before the count will help our tally efforts, and if you see one of the teams out counting on Dec. 27, give them a friendly wave!

To learn more or sign up to participate in the local Winter Bird Count, email Hunger Mountain bird count coordinator Zac Cota at zcotaweaver@gmail.com or visit the Audubon.org webpage for the count here.