Looking for a Partridge in a Pear Tree--.Or a Siskin in a Sycamore--or a Handful of Hawks in a Hemlock hemlock, any tree of the genus Tsuga, coniferous evergreens of the family Pinaceae (pine family) native to North America and Asia. The common hemlock of E North America is T. How many birds can you count? This might be a great year to find out. In December, as many as 50,000 birders will flock together for the 100th annual National Audubon Society The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservancy. Incorporated in 1905, it is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world. Christmas Bird Count The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a census of birds in the Western Hemisphere, performed annually in the early Northern-hemisphere winter by volunteer birders. The purpose is to provide population data for use in science, especially conservation biology, though many people . Started in 1900, the count has turned into the largest and longest-running wildlife survey ever. Counters will fan out between December 16 and January 3 all around North and South America South America, fourth largest continent (1991 est. pop. 299,150,000), c.6,880,000 sq mi (17,819,000 sq km), the southern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. to count as many birds as possible. Why? The Audubon Society says we can judge how the environment is doing by learning how the birds are doing. And December is a good time to do the count because the leaves are off the trees in most areas, making birds easy to spot. But in the beginning, the goal was to encourage people to count birds rather than shoot them, which was a Christmas tradition in some parts of the country. The count has become a tradition for a lot of people. "It becomes a holiday thing for them to do," says Audubon Society count director Geoff LeBaron. Kids are welcome, too. "There are a lot of kids who are very avid birdwatchers This is a list of the world's greatest birdwatchers, based on the number of species of birds seen. Depending on the taxonomic viewpoint, there are about 8,800–10,200 living bird species. and who are among the best bird counters out there," says LeBaron. Most of the counting takes place in the daytime. But some groups focus on owls. "They tend to go out starting at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and bird for a couple of hours before it gets light," says LeBaron. Lots of good science is resulting from the bird counts. Counters recently tracked massive wintertime movements of large numbers of birds like pine siskins The Siskins were a Canadian aerobatic flying team that was established in 1929 at Camp Borden, Ontario. Flying three Armstrong Whitworth Siskin biplanes, the Siskins quickly built a reputation for performing dangerous stunts, such as tieing their planes together with rope in midair. , evening grosbeaks, and the common redpoll The Common Redpoll, Carduelis flammea, is a species in the finch family. It breeds somewhat further south than the Arctic Redpoll, also in habitats with thickets or shrubs. Nominate C. f. . In the winter of 1997-98, "virtually all of those winter finches moved," LeBaron said, probably because of food shortages. The Christmas Bird Count can't explain why such things happen, but LeBaron said it would be interesting to check past counts to see if such "superflights" matched up with past El Nino weather events, as in 1997-98. Give it a try; the birds are counting on you! Magazine Birds Let's have our own Christmas Bird Count. How many bird illustrations can you find in the pages of this issue of Jack and Jill? Be sure to check every page, and then write yours answer in this blank. Birds -- ANSWERS: 23, one or more birds appear on pages 2, 3, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 25, 27, 32, and 36 |
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