The Bronx-Westchester Christmas Bird Count will be held on MONDAY, December 26, 2011. This count has an 87 year history and was started by the famed Bronx County Bird Club. In 1924 the club came up with the idea of dividing into teams, with each team responsible for a specific territory and members would scout the territory before hand and stake out any rarities. This new strategy soon caught on and now is the basis on how counts are done. The count roughly covers nearly all of the Bronx and Westchester below Interstate I-287. It has found 224 species in its history and averages 117 species a year. The Bronx territories can easily be reached by the NY City Subway system and is a great opportunity for birders from the other boroughs. The compilation dinner will be at the Lenoir Nature Center, 19 Dudley Street in Yonkers. The cost is only $10 and we'll have a great selection of hot food and fabulous homemade desserts by the great bakers from the Hudson River Audubon Society If you plan to join us on the count, visit the count’s web page at http://www.hras.org/bwcbc.html to find how to contact the leaders in the different territories. Participants can also find a printable foldable checklist here. People with feeders inside the count circle can participate by simply counting the birds in their yards and sending the results in. Details on feeder counts and how to submit them can be found at http://www.hras.org/count/cbcfeeder.htm. The web site also contains reports from past counts, a spread sheet with all years tallied, history of the count with highlights, a link to a great 1991 article in American Birds by John Farrand, Jr. about the Bronx-County Bird Club, count forms and checklists. I encourage other counts and count leaders to use and change the forms (WORD documents) for their own censuses. Good luck to everyone on all your counts. Michael Bochnik --
NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
