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Birding is a walking meditation for Squirrel Hill’s Michelle Kienholz. “I’m listening and I’m looking and I hear a sound and I know where to look in the canopy or on the ground for that particular bird,” Kiehholz said. “And I’m so immersed in the moment that I’m not thinking about what’s going on at work or with my money-pit-house or anything else going on in the world.”
On the last Saturday of this month, Kienholz plans to walk around Homewood Cemetery counting birds as part of the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count — something Kienholz has done for the past 15 years.
The count is never a dull affair, according to Kienholz. She had to put on snowshoes to track birds in 2020. And came across “the falcon hattrick” when she spotted a peregrine falcon sitting in the Monongahela River, along with a merlin and an American kestrel during the Christmas Bird Count of 2013 near Duck Hollow.
Now in its 125th year, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running citizen science project in the country. Every year from mid-December to early-January, people from all over the Americas get outside in snow, ice, mud and sunshine and count their local birds. It started off as a Christmas bird hunt back in the late 1800s, until conservationists decided to turn the tradition into an annual census of feathered friends. There’s bird data from the Christmas Bird Count that goes back to the 1910s in the Pittsburgh region, according to Brian Shema, operations director at the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.
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The Bird Count in the Pittsburgh region takes place every year on the Saturday after Christmas.
Volunteers set out in their defined locations and count every bird that they see. “For a party that might be hiking through a local park, they’re basically just going to tally every bird that they see by species,” Shema said. When they’re done, they turn in their tally to the count leader, who totals the birds.
Every bird counted contributes to a growing body of research on birds across the country. Other census efforts include tracking backyard birds through FeederWatch from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a new five-year project called the Pennsylvania Bird Atlas checks on the population and distribution of birds in the state, run by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Together, these efforts provide a glimpse of the state of the birds.
The trends with common birds in Pennsylvania, “are generally stable,” according to Shema. On average, volunteers in the 15-mile radius of the Pittsburgh count circle spot about 75 species of birds. The American crow is the most common bird in the area with anywhere between 15,000 and 25,000 sightings on the day, mostly in the Oakland area where they roost. Other popular bird sightings include Canada goose, downy woodpecker and typically more than a thousand blue jays.
The impact of harsh winters and climate change are evident in the count. Local bird populations change during very harsh winter conditions. Pittsburgh in 2017 — a cold year — brought bigger populations of waterfowl on the rivers, including redhead, Iceland gull, lesser black-backed gull and great black-backed gull. It was “the only year that we saw those species in the last ten years,” Shema said.
Some southern species are flying north. Red-bellied woodpeckers are now a relatively common species throughout western Pennsylvania, but did not exist in western Pennsylvania several decades ago. “We are able to watch — through Christmas bird count data — that range expand northward,” Shema said. “The red bellied woodpecker was a southern species. And it is basically marching northward. And it has done so over the course of many decades.”
And some migratory birds are staying over in Pittsburgh during the winter. Gray catbirds and chipping sparrows are showing up more often in the winter bird count. “These are species that would normally have migrated, not far, but certainly out of Pennsylvania to some of our southern states. Because of mild winters, many of these individuals are not feeling pressure to migrate and actually they are staying.”
This year, the Pittsburgh count will take place on Dec. 28. There’s also a kids bird count that will be held at 10 a.m at Beechwood Farms in Fox Chapel. Other official events include a count in Buffalo Creek Nature Park on Dec. 14, at locations in the Mon Valley on Dec. 15, in southern Butler at Succop Park on Dec. 29. Anyone can join the count, either in person or by checking their bird feeders.
More information about how to participate and record your local birds is available on the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania’s website.
