BIRDS COUNTED BY LOCAL ENTHUSIASTS AUDUBON SOCIETY HOLDS ANNUAL EVENT TO TALLY SPECIES SEEN ACROSS THE VALLEY.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

VAN NUYS - Creeping alongside creeks and hillsides, dozens of local birdwatchers set out with binoculars Saturday as part of the National Audubon Society's 105th annual Christmas Bird Count.

``It's heartwarming to see that right here in one of the most crowded cities in the world and between some of the busiest two freeways, you can see 80 species of birds in one day,'' said Kris Ohlenkamp, who led half a dozen birders through a four-square-mile area northwest of the Santa Monica and Ventura freeways.

Ohlenkamp's group was one of seven that fanned out across the San Fernando Valley. Founded as an alternative to hunting, the annual bird count has provided nearly a century of data on bird populations.

``You can't believe it until you go out and do it. I've lived here all my life and I had not known there was so much variety and such unusual birds living in the city,'' said Ohlenkamp, a 54-year-old safety consultant and conservation chairman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society.

Ohlenkamp's group spotted about 80 species of birds including the Belted Kingfisher, a fish-diving raptor with a black mohawklike crown and a belt around his paunch.

Birders, as birdwatchers like to call themselves, spent the early morning hours Saturday watching, listening and documenting the city's flying, feathered creatures from the whistlers to the quackers, to the songbirds and chirpers.

``It was exhilarating and fun hunting birds with our binoculars, pencils and eyeballs,'' said Donna Tilman, a 62-year-old retired Chatsworth probation officer who led a group through Limekiln Canyon, a Northridge park squeezed between two housing tracts.

That group counted more than 35 different species including the waxwing">Cedar Waxwing, a stout, buff-colored bird with a black mask.

An estimated 500 species of birds live in Los Angeles County, more than any other county in the United States except San Diego County. And California has more known bird species than the entire continent of Europe, said Art Langton, who compiles the Christmas bird count for the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society.

``This is one of the better places to be during the wintertime. Coastal California gets most of the highest counts in the nation,'' Langton said. Results of the local bird count will be available next week.

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1) Members of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society scan the trees for birds in the Sepulveda Basin on Saturday morning. The local birdwatchers were participating in the National Audubon Society's 105th annual Christmas Bird Count.

(2 -- 3) Armed with binoculars, the group counted more than 35 different species of birds, including a turkey vulture, left.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer