By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media
It all started 118 years ago with 25 groups of birders going out counting birds on a given day around Christmas. From that small start the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count has grown to well over 2500 counts across the United States, Canada, Hawaii, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, Central and South America.
According to the National Audubon Society “the Christmas Bird Count has evolved to become a hugely important pool of data for researchers studying the ongoing status and ranges of bird populations across the Americas. The only other similar yardstick is the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), run during June in the breeding season. The co-analyses of CBC and BBS have become the combined yardstick by which ornithologists and conservation biologists assess how bird populations are doing–and where they are occurring–across the Americas.”
The Christmas Bird count is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across the U.S., Canada, and many countries in the Western Hemisphere go out over a 24-hour period on one calendar day to count birds. The Audubon Society has designated December 14 through January 5th as the count period in which a count can occur. Birds can bee counted at feeders and in the count area for a total of five days. The birds counted two days before or after the designated day are included as counted during the count week.
In 2013 the Audubon Society made the Christmas Count free to participate in and is funding the counts with donations. In years past participates paid $5 to participate in a count.
The first bird count to occur in Raton was in 2001 and lasted only eight years ending in 2008 before New Mexico State Parks Ranger Scott Chalmers decided to restart the Raton count. The center of the Raton count is at the exit of I-25 and Highway 72 and extends 7 1/2 miles out or a 15 mile diameter circle from that center point. The circle includes Sugarite Canyon State Park and Yankee Canyon as well as extending south past the 3-mile bridge.
If you would like to participate or donate to help support the Christmas Bird count you can learn more at https://www.audubon.org/conservation/join-christmas-bird-count
Below is a list of the birds seen on the Christmas Count in the Raton area.
Wild Turkey 77
Cooper’s Hawk 1
Bald Eagle 2
Red-tailed Hawk 2
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) 49
Eurasian Collared Dove 32
Belted Kingfisher 2
Lewis’s Woodpecker 6
Downy Woodpecker 5
Hairy Woodpecker 3
Northern Flicker 7
Steller’s Jay 17
Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay 12
Black-billed Magpie 13
Clark’s Nutcracker 1
American Crow 7
Common Raven 58
Horned Lark 50
Black-capped Chickadee 20
Mountain Chickadee 2
Juniper Titmouse 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 10
Brown Creeper 6
Canyon Wren 1
Pacific/Winter Wren 1
American Dipper 1
Golden-crowned Kinglet 3
Western Bluebird 1
Townsend’s Solitaire 2
European Starling 54
American Tree Sparrow 4
Dark-eyed Junco 150
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) 8
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon) 5
Dark-eyed Junco (Pink-sided) 6
Dark-eyed Junco (Gray-headed) 41
Song Sparrow 14
Spotted Towhee 35
House Finch 8
Pine Siskin 3
American Goldfinch 14
House Sparrow 18
