For more than 100 years, birders all over the world have looked forward to December, the time of the Christmas Bird Counts. Data gathered from these counts, or CBCs as they are known, is enormously valuable to scientists and other researchers regarding the abundance and distribution of the world’s bird species.

This year, the pandemic has changed this long tradition. CBCs are either cancelled entirely or modified to eliminate close personal contact as much as possible. Sadly, this applies to the Kids’ and Teen CBCs which SAS has sponsored for years with great success.

However, while disappointing, this does not mean that children and their families must give up counting birds this winter. The same option is available for families as for other birders for CBCs. The way this might work is for each family to choose a site: a backyard, a nearby park, a school yard, a nature center such as Effie Yeaw, along the American River. There are many options where one might find wintering birds in the Sacramento area.

Count all the birds your group sees and keep track of them. This can be for half an hour or all day. Hopefully, you will want to enter them in the great database called eBird. (For information on this, see the informative post by Chris Conard.) This is the citizen scientist part of the equation and makes the efforts worthwhile beyond the pleasure everyone receives from engaging in them.

To be consistent with past years’ dates for the two CBCs, the weekend to do this would be the first weekend in January, that is January 2nd or 3rd.

This is such a great way to engage kids’ and teens’ involvement with nature and the out of doors and to spend time as a family. Enjoy!!

- Maureen Geiger