Just before 8 a.m. on Sunday, December 15, a crowd is gathering at the southeast rim of the reservoir in New York City’s Central Park. Most are bundled in puffer coats, huddled together in murmuring clusters, though a few eager individuals already have binoculars aimed at treetops or across the reservoir’s vast, glass-smooth surface. The morning is bright and gray, a crisp 30° Fahrenheit. One of the assembled, David Ringer, clutches a pair of hand warmer packets: “Christmas Bird Count survival trick number one.”
The Christmas Bird Count, or CBC, has survived—and thrived—for 125 Decembers. The inaugural counters may have lacked portable, chemical warming devices, but they turned out for the same reason as birders today: To identify and enumerate as many birds as possible in one winter outing. Central Park has been a CBC site since the very first count in 1900, with a checklist submitted by a single birder.
More than a century later, there are enough participants to carve the park into eight sections. Staff from New York City Bird Alliance (formerly New York City Audubon), which coordinates the counts in Manhattan, Governors and Randall’s Islands, and parts of northern New Jersey, give a quick welcome—briefly derailed by a Red-tailed Hawk soaring overhead—and offer loaner binoculars to anyone who needs them. Then the groups are off, hurrying to their sections, equipped with a clipboard and a list of species they’re likely to see in the park. They’ll bird for three or four hours and then reconvene for the official compilation, over well-earned hot soup.
Readers of the still-new Bird-Lore (Audubon magazine’s predecessor) first saw the call for volunteers in December, 1900, in the magazine’s tenth issue. A “Christmas Bird-Census” was proposed as a new tradition, a bloodless alternative to once-fashionable Christmas hunts, on which sportsmen raced “to the fields and woods on the cheerful mission of killing practically everything in fur or feathers that crossed their path.” The season offered other advantages, as well: “The comparatively small number of birds present during the winter, together with the absence of foliage, except on coniferous trees” made a comprehensive count of an area a reasonable undertaking. With some requests for the data to collect—including location, time of day, and weather—but little other guidance, readers were invited to take part by simply “spending a portion of Christmas Day with the birds and sending a report of their ‘hunt’ to BIRD-LORE before they retire that night.”
Around two dozen readers did just that. Their checklists appeared in the next issue of Bird-Lore, January-February 1901: “We trust that the spirit of wholesome competition aroused by BIRD-LORE’s bird census added materially to the pleasure of those who took part in it.” Birders led counts in 25 locations, from Monterey Bay to New Brunswick, Canada. Their sightings included two Ferruginous Hawks in Pueblo, Colorado; 500 Red-winged Blackbirds in Baldwin, Louisiana; and shrikes in six states. In total, readers reported 89 species and more than 18,500 individual birds. The original dispatch from Central Park was not among the more impressive contributions.
“Guess how many species they saw,” prompts section leader Ken Chaya as his group of around 30 birders sets out in the park’s northwest. Some high double-digits are called out. Chaya waits a beat before the reveal: “Six.”
At the time of the first count, the oldest parts of Central Park were just 42 years old, the youngest completed less than 25 years earlier.
Submitted by one Charles H. Rogers, the modest list was the only from New York City and one of two from the state. At the time of the first count, the oldest parts of Central Park were just 42 years old, the youngest completed less than 25 years earlier. Rogers reported Herring Gulls, starlings, a robin, a Downy Woodpecker, and two Song Sparrows—plus White-throated Sparrows, merely noted as “abundant.” He didn’t record the temperature, but it was likely similar to the 33° F logged just eight miles away in Englewood, New Jersey, where Bird-Lore editor (and Audubon Society officer) Frank Chapman himself conducted a count. The Englewood party spotted 18 species, among them Northern Bobwhite, a singing bluebird, one Barred Owl, and 55 Yellow-rumped Warblers (recorded as Myrtle Warblers). Rogers would later work with Chapman in the ornithology department at the American Museum of Natural History, but in 1900, at the time of the first CBC, he was just 12 years old.
Chaya guesses he’s taken part in at least a dozen CBCs, either as a participant or section leader. He’s been birding in Central Park for more than 30 years. “I did come to the park yesterday to do some scouting,” he says, “but I might just call that Saturday.” Chaya describes himself as an urban naturalist. He loves birds, yes, but he’s also enthusiastic about insects and plants, in particular trees. After quick introductions, he asks for a volunteer to take the first shift recording sightings on the species list.
A Tufted Titmouse is the section’s first bird in the count. The species isn’t considered a true migrant, but its abundance in the area, as reflected in CBC data, is erratic. Chapman’s first Englewood report didn’t include one, though he couldn’t resist noting in Bird-Lore—his disappointment palpable at dipping on the species—that he’d seen a single individual on December 1st and again on the 20th. The 2023 Central Park CBC tallied just two titmice in the entire park. It’s immediately clear that won’t be the case this year. Chaya advises the volunteer with the clipboard: “Hold your fire until we get the full count.” The group watches birds for a while, then pauses to confer. “Four jays, three red-bellies,” lists Chaya, to general agreement, but debate breaks out over the exact count of titmice. “It’s tits galore!” someone calls. “Sorry, I had to.”
Since its debut in 1900, the Christmas Bird Count has only grown. These days, upwards of 80,000 observers across the western hemisphere participate between December 14 and January 5 in more than 2,600 count circles, logging more than 40 million birds each year. The result is a massive dataset more than a century in the making. Audubon and other organizations use the data to assess bird populations and to help shape conservation efforts. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have cited CBC data in reports on climate change and biodiversity loss. Alongside other large-scale, long-running community science projects like the Breeding Bird Survey, CBC records have brought into relief the dire stakes for birds, and bird lovers: Of 604 North American bird species, nearly two-thirds face an increasing risk of extinction without immediate and substantial cuts to global carbon emissions.
But in spite of the plunging bird curve, the mood at the Central Park count is light, equal parts focus and excitement. Like Chaya, many of the birders in his group are CBC veterans; at least one person is on day 2 of a back-to-back bird count weekend, having taken part in the Brooklyn CBC on Saturday. Others are brand new. Eliana Drier got up at 5:30 am to commute from Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Drier wanted to participate in 2023 but didn’t sign up. “I did a lot of birding this year,” she says. “I felt like I was ready.”
Urban park ranger Ariel Cordova-Rojas, who’s helping shepherd the farther-flung count groups around the park today, but mostly sticking with Chaya’s cohort (and once made headlines for transporting a sick Mute Swan, by subway, to a wildlife rehabilitation clinic), is emphatic that beginners are welcome at CBCs. “I like to tell people who aren’t as confident in their identification skills, if you can spot birds for other people to ID, that’s just as important.”
Near the 100th Street entrance to the park, Chaya’s group strolls across a gently rolling field dotted with trees. “This is a great area for ground-nesting bees and wasps,” Chaya says. Ursula Mitra, who’s been keeping an eBird checklist in tandem with the clipboard count, stares hard at a promising silhouette in the distance, then sighs. “I was hoping kestrel, but it became a Mourning Dove,” she says.
Shortly after 9 a.m. everyone stands together for several minutes to watch a couple Cooper’s Hawks harass a squirrel.
Occasionally the group splits up to maximize coverage in complicated sections, but shortly after 9 a.m. everyone stands together for several minutes to watch a couple Cooper’s Hawks harass a squirrel, with lots of oohs and ahhs at the rodent’s near escapes. Then it’s a short walk to the section’s first water feature, a small pool currently host to a throng of mixed ducks: Mallards, a few bill-tucked Green-winged Teals, a lone American Black Duck, and a pair of Northern Shovelers. As the teals and the Black Duck shuffle their feathers, their wings flash patches of acid green and ultramarine, shockingly bright despite the weak winter sunlight. One counter is seeing shovelers for the first time. He’s delighted by their oversized bills.
The group admires the ducks until they’re scattered by a cheerful off-leash dog, to grumbles from the birders. But it’s time to move on anyway.
“One year it was snowing so hard you couldn’t see your nose in front of your face,” says Debbie Mullins, the double CBC weekender. She’s been birding for 11 years, since she retired, and joining Christmas Bird Counts for almost as long. She’s matter of fact about the hard weather years: “You just try to look through your foggy optics.”
In the North Woods, a forested area high in the park’s northwest corner, the group stumbles into what Chaya deems a “bonanza” of White-throated Sparrows, busily kick-hopping through the leaf litter. Estimating their numbers is a challenge (Rogers’s choice to leave it at “abundant” in 1900 is feeling understandable). Out of the dense woods, a sleeping raccoon is spotted overhead in the crook of a tree. Chaya shows the group how to tell the difference between an American Sycamore and a hybrid London Plane. And then—is that a raven? Two ravens! One of the glossy black corvids is giving lazy chase to a Red-tailed Hawk, dropping graceful turns as it buzzes the raptor. Despite the name, Common Ravens are unusual enough in New York City that they don’t have a line in the standard species list and instead get written in below. A counter exclaims, “We’re into the ‘other’ category!”
By 11:15 a.m. the temperature has crept up to 36° F, still plenty cold for binocular-holding hands. Most of the Central Park groups are wrapping up their counts and heading in for a social hour before the compilation, but Chaya wants to keep birding till the last minute. Most of his group stays, too. “It’s fun,” says Drier, the first-timer. “I can’t feel my pinkies.”
In their last hour, the group sees woodpeckers and juncos, a Black-capped Chickadee whose eager attention suggests it’s been hand-fed in the past, and a few Hermit Thrushes. “Fern alert,” declares Chaya, pointing out the aptly named Christmas fern, still green and sporting stocking-shaped leaflets. Everyone laments not finding a Brown Creeper. As they wait for the van that will deliver them to the compilation, the counters compare clipboard and eBird checklist. They reach “a compromise” on nuthatches.
The group’s avidity means they’ve missed out on the soup. They arrive at the Central Park Arsenal, headquarters for the New York City parks department, just as the compilation is about to begin. NYC Bird Alliance staff run through the species list and fill in a giant, projected, spreadsheet as section leaders call out their tallies. It is indeed a banner year for Tufted Titmice, with 283 counted across the park, and a new Central Park CBC record is set for Red-tailed Hawks: 25. No one saw an owl of any kind, which draws a collective awww. But the room erupts in spontaneous applause when the Northeast group announces they saw a soaring Bald Eagle.
There is really only one tough question, from the Southeast contingent, about how to count their Blue Jays. “We saw 24,” says the section leader, “Then one got eaten.” In the end the unlucky bird is counted (“We saw it before the hawk did.”), and the 125th Christmas Bird Count comes to a close in Central Park. The final numbers: 60 species and 8,212 total birds.
Chaya’s group didn’t see anything truly astonishing—the hawk-harrying raven was a highlight, he says—but a morning out birding is always a morning well spent. And he appreciates the regulars. “They may be common birds,” Chaya says, but you can never predict just what will happen in the field, what you will or won’t see. “So, in a sense, it’s always a surprise.”
