Christmas Bird Count 2012

Counting birds (instead of shooting them) for 113 years and beyond...

Good old Frank Chapman had it right back in 1900 when he suggested a bird "census" as an alternative to the annual "side hunt" that had routinely claimed the lives of many feathered animals.  I personally have been participating for a mere 10 years, and this particular count was the wettest one in my short association with citizen science contribution.  It rained and rained all day on December 15th, 2012 with a temperature of 47 degrees as the high of the day.  I stayed in "Area 20" as my one-mile "square" of the 15 mile count circle managed by Andrea Szymczak.  Carl Schroeder acts as Wisconsin's CBC Regional Editor for data.  I was on my own this year as Barbara needed to be at work on that particular Saturday and I'm almost certain that in the end, staying warm and dry was just fine by her; however I know that she would have if she could have gone along to be with me.

I began my search for random avian life along the south bank of the Menominee River Parkway just south of State Street in Wauwatosa on the easternmost "edge" of Area 20.  Despite the gray skies and miserable conditions I tallied some Dark-eyed juncos and Mallards, with a pair of Ring-billed gulls out in the drizzle and cool of that particular CBC morning.  On my way back out, I encountered three individuals walking towards me on the woodsy path.  They looked just like birders. In fact, they were when I asked them what they were "up to" on this wet morning.  Interestingly I did not expect to encounter anyone else on this stretch of the CBC, as one must first "register" with the count chairperson beforehand.  It turns out that this group was part of a larger group on the bluff-side of Doyne Park led by Urban Ecology's Timothy Vargo.  Somehow he had his small group of soggy bird-watchers walking through a combination of CBC areas, and claimed to have "told Andrea" this planned route in the week prior.  I pointed out that I had "done" Area 20 for the past three years and that (while I was glad to see company) that perhaps it might be problematic if his group just moseyed through several areas "counting" birds that may have already been accounted for by the area leaders.  Well, ultimately...that's for the "experts" to sort out; I just knew I was "official" in my area, and that all I could do was to continue my organized census in the constant rain. With a round of handshakes for his group of fellow well-intentioned birders I climbed into my trusty WPT, eventually leaving them as they walked northward towards who-knows-where - counting the birds they saw for who-knows-what eventual purpose.

A stop inside Calvary Cemetery next to the freeway that also abuts a strip-joint property called Monreal's Encore scored me another group of juncos, Northern cardinals and a half-dozen Black-capped chickadees.  I marveled at some of the elaborate graffiti scrawled against a retaining wall and listened to the disjointed echoes of a microphone-narrated ceremony to honor fallen war veterans that wafted through the rainy mist across four lanes of traffic on I-94 from the direction of the distant but impressively expansive, civil war era (36,738 graves) Wood National Cemetery.  I mused that those patriotic umbrella-wielding folks with their uniformed attachment were also getting pretty soaked, but for an even grander cause than I was currently involved with.  I respectfully paused to attempt to glean the purpose of the solemn rainy-day gathering, but was unable to distinguish the exact meaning due to the distance, and the constant splashing of the cars and trucks on the rain-soaked freeway.  I moved on.

The remainder of the day's count went fairly routinely with one exception; a surprise encounter with a homeless person "living" in an encampment deep in the woods between (upper) Vliet Street and (lower) Juneau Ave.  In a small, grassy woods-clearing just below an Milwaukee Police vehicle facility (on approximately 48th and Vliet streets) there's a small City tot-lot with a swing set planted in a bed of wood chips. I walked past it as something deeper in the woods caught my eye. I began moving towards the color.  I almost blindly wandered right into a bright-blue, tarp-created, homeless domicile out of sheer careless curiosity. As I crunched on the wet branches and high-stepped through the leafless bramble; I saw sudden movement.  I froze. A black-jacketed figure wearing a fuzzy-rimmed hood, hunch-walked towards a pile of soaked newspapers piled on a stump and began riffling through them with some purpose unbeknownst to me.  I peered into my drippy and foggy binoculars and spied the sprawling homeless "spread" that had a lot of miscellaneous items scattered around that looked suspiciously as though they might have been "liberated" from the surrounding neighborhood. As I stood watching from a distance leaning against a large tree trunk, I saw a newer looking green ten-speed type bicycle wheeled out from the brush, and this unlikely bicyclist  proceed to actually "lock" it to a nearby tree.  (Apparently there's no honor among the homeless either.)  

Now perhaps this particular unfortunate situation is somehow known and tolerated, however if my home was located in that cozy Milwaukee neighborhood, it would majorly creep me out knowing that while my small children were at play on the tot lot swings in that clearing, that there was a disgustingly grubby human lurking nearby in the woods with some of my stuff possibly collected from my own back yard.  I debated stopping in to tell the police in person however I envisioned a hassle with that scenario, so I sent an anonymous email "tip" instead.

I drove the remainder of my route in a serpentine fashion, cutting up one street and down another with my window open as much as I could tolerate the wind and raindrops; listening.  I was rewarded in the Washington Highlands neighborhood with a random Red-bellied woodpecker call and four different groups of House sparrows, noisily cheeping deep within clumps of weather-protective shrubbery.  I called it quits just as daylight (gray as it was) began to fade into dusk.  I was wet and tired, ready to tally up my sightings for the day.  I later emailed my results to Andrea and skipped the post-count festivities at the Schlitz Audubon Center for the dryness and warmth of the apartment and the equally warm company of Barbara; the 2012 CBC was now only a memory with only the day's census results to view.  That was just fine with me...I did my part and felt glad to have assisted in even the smallest of ways.   The data collected by observers over the past century allow researchers, conservation biologists, and other interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. When combined with other surveys such as the Breeding Bird Survey, it provides a picture of how the continent's bird populations have changed in time and space over the past hundred years. 

Next year; why not join me?  

Email me your interest for 2013 -  birdstud@birdmilwaukee.com