Audubon's 125th is in the books, mostly
Use 2025 to get yourself prepped for the next round of Audubon Christmas Bird Counts
Every time I participate in an Audubon Christmas Bird Count, there’s that one ID that is a head-scratcher, if only temporarily.
The wheels in the ol’ brain run slightly out of alignment and veer off into the rumble strips. Maybe I reference a book or an app, and finally, it’s realized (or one of my companions calls it), and more often than not, it’s a forehead-slapper that yanks things back on track. Dammit, I knew that!
My most memorable moment for the Tulsa Audubon Society’s 2024 count is an unexpected first. As a lifelong duck hunter, you’d think I’d have instantly identified shotgun blasts a half-hour before sunrise.
It just didn’t register at our location, the Judy Z. Kishner Library parking lot at Sperry, where I met with longtime birders Jeff Cox and Bill Carrell to begin our pre-dawn to sunset bird count.
I thought it was someone pounding on steel or unloading and dropping something at the warehouse next door until I heard a more telltale volley from several gunners. When we drove down the street to look across Highway 11, we saw their decoy spread and knew without doubt. We later learned from another hunter that the southern shore of Sperry Lake has always been privately owned; it just happens to be owned by some duck hunters now.
Next year, we’ll have to note the legal shooting hours and get to the lake a few minutes before the scatterguns fire up for the day. The lake is a familiar roosting spot for waterfowl, shorebirds, and thousands of blackbirds, starlings, and grackles.
To be clear, the hunters are not a problem; they are just a new development. They may be a return to what was. Tulsa Audubon will mark its 100th annual count in 2026. I can’t claim to know the history of duck hunting around the lake, but Cox would attest it’s not been the case for at least 30 years.
We often visit with duck hunters and deer hunters in the area, and they sometimes give us good birding tips.
Dec. 14, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025, saw the National Audubon Society’s 125th Christmas Bird Count. Over a century and a quarter across two continents and several Pacific islands, a few hunters stirring birds around one little lake is a tiny grain among waves of shifting sands monitored by what has become the world’s most considerable and most organized citizen science effort. Its longevity and relative consistency give it its unique strength.
For those new to the topic, the annual count involves volunteers following specified routes through a designated 15-mile-diameter circle, counting every bird they see or that can be identified by sound. Some volunteers spend just a few hours driving or hiking, while others go from dawn to dusk—beyond that if they call for owls. Count circles cover areas from northern Canada and Alaska to Guam and the southern tip of South America. Each count-circle group picks a day between the start date in mid-December and the end in early January to execute their tally.
National Audubon reports 816 counts completed for its 125th CBC, with 15,810,814 birds tallied. The numbers aren’t final, however. It takes time for local organizers and national compilers to compare notes and finalize things, but anyone can review what’s tallied this year and past years online.
Here in Oklahoma, groups organized to cover six count areas this year but have done more than 20 areas in the past. Tulsa Audubon Society members have counted the same circle centered in north Tulsa County every year since 1926. Volunteer numbers have ebbed and flowed, to be sure, but the count has been consistent.
For this story, I intended to count on Dec. 14 with the Tulsa group and with the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve group on Jan. 4. My next column will explain why I missed the second one.
Our country turns 250 on July 4, 2026, which means this wildlife organization has conducted an annual volunteer conservation effort for a little over half the history of its nation of origin.
That’s a heckuva thing to be a part of, and anyone can join in. All it takes is a little practice, a decent pair of binoculars, and a good bird book—or the Merlin and eBird apps, if you prefer.
Expect this to be a repeated theme in this column for the next year or so.
The average number of species logged in the Tulsa counts over the past 30 years is 106.1. Take a gander at the list of Tulsa CBC birds on the Audubon results page mentioned above, and you’ll get a nice initial list of mostly common winter birds to learn to identify. Narrow the list, get good at a few, and expand as you go. You’ll get there. It’s not as complicated as it seems.
Nothin’ to it.
Granted, uncommon and rare variations also pop up that only truly avid birders will know—or figure out—but trust me, not one of the 50 people in this year’s Tulsa count was ever more than shouting distance from at least one expert.
It’s a fantastic way to learn.
Our team, Cox, Carrel, myself, and Christine Otto, have (more-or-less) been solid since I was the newbie in 2008. Carrell and Cox pre-dated my arrival by many years. I’ve missed a year or two and done half-days because of work. The same goes for Otto. Cox and Carrell are our expert, reliable anchors. Our little team covers just a portion of one of the six areas within that big count circle.
This year, the team was whole. I met Cox at about 5:30 a.m. for some owling before we went to the library to connect with Carrell. We met Otto just after sunrise at Sperry Lake, our annual launching point.
According to Cox’s tally, we spent 9.5 hours on the count. That’s 5 hours in the car and 4.5 hours on foot. We covered 2 miles on foot and 41 miles by car (technically stop-and-go and in-and-out of the car) and spent an hour bird-feeder watching as we had lunch. We contributed 50 species to the 70 species total for our quadrant. The species total for the 15-mile area was 108, a little above average.
I know many who read this column love bluebirds and have been concerned about the big winter hits to that population in recent years. So, I’m happy to report that their numbers were up. The 2024 total is 125, a significant improvement from the teens, 40s, and 50s the past three years and well above the 30-year average of 102.25. It’s a good indicator, but we’ll see what happens next year.
Things were equally rosy on Jan. 4 at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve count, where organizer Don Wolfe reported a record 93 species, including a pair of golden eagles. The previous record for that area was 89, set in 2020, and the average over that count area’s 27-year history is 76.3. He also reported the count had one first species: an out-of-range varied thrush.
Way out of range.
A point of loosely related interest: I once wrote a column about a varied thrush that overwintered in Fairbanks, Alaska, thanks to backyard feeders. The birds are Pacific Coast thrushes, which nest across Alaska and northern British Columbia, and are regular residents of areas along the coast down to Washington, Oregon, and northern California.
And how did a varied thrush end up in Oklahoma? Well, that is just one of those true head-scratchers you might enjoy if you participate in a Christmas Bird Count.