Christmas Bird Census - A Conservation Tradition

In the late 1800s people celebrated a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt".  Teams of gunners would be picked; the winners were the group with the highest pile of feathered and pelted carcasses.   A feast followed.  

Wild Turkeys, Camp Zehnder YMCA Brick, NJ.  Thanks to the manager and Ward Halligan for arranging access.

The 2010 "Hunters".

As 1900 began,  the conservation movement was just developing and on Christmas Day 1900,  Frank Chapman an ornithologist with the fledgling Audubon Society, proposed and started a new holiday.
It was the "Christmas Bird Census" (CBC); birds would be counted rather than killed.  

 

Ring-necked Ducks, Lakewood, NJ

For most species, CBC data is much less important than that of Breeding Bird Surveys gathered in spring and summer.  CBCs have a strong recreational, recruiting and social component and are enjoyed by the public; it's a complex subject to ascertain whether the tens of thousands of hours spent on the annual event could be better applied to projects with immediate returns such as habitat protection and improvement.

The crew on the Manasquan River showing determination to improve their naked eye skills by refusing to even have binoculars.   



Ruddy Ducks, Manasquan River

On this count the best bird was a seal in the Manasquan River that someone thought "had to be a cormorant, since it dove and only showed black".   We had 62 species with the highlights being 5 Bald Eagles, 14 Wild Turkeys, an American Woodcock. 3 Palm Warblers and a Rusty Blackbird.    

Bald Eagle, Manasquan River

Hooded Merganser, male and female, Lakewood



Border of Allaire Airport





Manasquan River, looking west towards the WMA and the distant hills of Allaire State Park

Bird and Turk finding Eastern Bluebird and Palm Warbler



A Great Blue Heron, perhaps getting hungry as the lakes freeze, was stalking the edge of the uplands for something other than fish.



Turk tallying the total take.

Happy Holidays from the Team of Bird Casper, Turk Meriney, Timo Johnson, Tuco Virrazzi and Ward-Turdus Halligan 



Off to Costa Rica

We are back from another exciting expedition to that perennial hotbed of biodiversity, Costa Rica.  The majority of time was spent in the NW section of the country.  We assessed the coast, the peninsula of Santa Elena, the forest and beaches of Santa Rosa National Park and the mountains of Cordilerra de Guanacaste with a few spectacular days in the cloud forests of the older range of  Cordilerra de Tilaran.  This trip was relatively tame and less edgy than our recent assault on the peaks of Darien National Park along the border of Panama and Colombia where we searched for common to rare endemic herptiles, birds and mammals.



White-fronted Parrots in Rincon de la Veija National Park

 



Cataract in Rincon de la Vieja
National Park



However on this trip we were hit by clouds, rain and 60 mile per hour winds along the ash field and our attempt to peer down on the red lava of Rincon de la Vieja from 6,000 feet was rebuked.  The long death hike with full supplies and gear to Playa Naranjo of Santa Rosa National Park proved  blister-making but was rewarded with a panoramic view of one of the most spectacular and secluded beaches in Central America.  We were alone, deep in the 50,000 hectares of the largest remaining dry forest habitat left in Central America on a deserted 20 mile long, Pacific beach. 

Here there was an assortment of insects, sea and land crabs, fishes, sea turtles, Prothonotary Warblers (from NJ?), Pale-billed Woodpeckers, Black Hawks, parrots and Jaguars.  And finally ten miles of switch backs up the Tilaran Mountains, the home of arguably the most beautiful bird in the world, the Resplendent Quetzal, turned on one, two, and then three dashboard lights on the smoking, 4 wheel drive.  We were forced to seek quick repairs at a high altitude, cold, drizzly dairy barn where I had to yell over the vacuum buzz of the milking machines for assistance.




Looking NE from our starting point in the morning for the hoped for goal; a rim view of the only live volcano in the Guanacaste range, Rincon de la Vieja.  The weather is rolling hard off the top ridge which proved dangerous and impassable as the open ash field was entered four hours later.   

The foothills are interspersed with huge trees possessing triangular buttresses.  The soils in tropical forest communities are often nutrient deficient with the great majority of the available carbon in the biomass.  The trees therefore have shallow root systems and the buttresses brace the massive trees from side winds.  If the trees are taken from these areas the deforested lands often have poor agricultural yields.

 

Long sweeping beach in NW Costa Rica on the Santa Elena peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean.  Over the ridge one can walk into Nicaragua. 



Playa Naranjo on the west edge of Santa Rosa National Park.  This may be the most secluded beach in Costa Rica.   At night it is visted by Coati Mundis, endangered sea turtles and Jaguars.



The incredible Playa Naranjo sweeps to the NW.

Stream flowing from the heights of Rincon de la Vieja.

Double-striped Thick-knees, an unusual, mainly nocturnal plover of dryer, open areas of Central and S. America. 

We shall have multiple posts on this expedition.