I Don't Count (Don't Ask Me)

Lately, I have found I can no longer do on my computer the things I was doing just fine before. This is not so much because of any infirmity on my part but because these websites have tech people and I am convinced these tech people must change things in order to keep their jobs.

So now instead of signing into one of my emails with a password I have to click more buttons in order to do so. The way I used to print was changed after the last alleged upgrade. When I downloaded a document as a pdf recently I got a pdf.aspx I couldn't open without a "third-party program." I had to look up how to change it back to a pdf so I could print it.

None of this has saved me any time or made my use of the computer any easier. I didn't ask for these changes, they were foisted upon me.

Not using eBird. (RE Berg-Andersson)

In the name of security, several sites I've signed into for years recently asked me to create a new password. I get it, people can hack into your computer if they get your password, although some disagree how often these passwords have to be changed. I disagree, too, considering the several data breaches that affected me within the last year that did not involve these websites forcing the new password.

So I am more than a little disappointed the good people behind the Great Backyard Bird Count, held every year during the Presidents' Day weekend, have made filing my bird lists more high-tech and less user-friendly. The organizations involved include the Cornell Ornithology Lab (creator of the Merlin app I use), Birds Canada and the national Audubon Society.

In the past I could go to a dedicated site, sign in and then attempt to go through the steps to post the number of birds I saw, where, under what conditions, what day and what time. 

That has changed. 

There is still a dedicated site, www.birdcount.org. But now to report you must use either the Merlin app, the eBird Mobile app or send the information to the eBird website. For this I would have to create an account.

I have no interest in creating an eBird account because I don't care to use eBird to list my sightings. Sure, I look at the eBird lists to see what others have found in particular areas, including my home county. But when you file to eBird it is expected you will keep a COUNT of how many birds you've seen every time you go out birding.

Still not using eBird. (RE Berg-Andersson)

When I am out in the field, with binoculars around my neck, a stick in one hand and the Merlin recording app in the other, it is hard enough just finding a bird by eye or ear without taking the extra step and counting.

Say I see a couple of titmice as I walk in one direction and I then see a couple of titmice on the way back - have I seen the same two or four?

Say I am by a frozen pond where the one bit of open water contains what looks like hundreds of Canada geese (plus others - as I saw several winters ago). These geese aren't sitting still waiting to be counted. Most people reporting huge numbers are estimating, and while they are counting and estimating they are missing other birds flying or swimming around.

I support what Cornell and the others are doing. The Great Backyard Bird Count helps scientists understand bird populations and their health by collecting data on bird sightings from participants around the world. This information is very important for monitoring changes in bird species and their habitats, especially as the environmental changes - the climate change the Trump administration considers a hoax. (More on that in a separate blog post.)

And I can understand why you have to post with Merlin and eBird. Cornell runs Merlin and eBird. It built the infrastructure. Why create a separate site when you have already spent a lot of time and money on a technology platform that can entice more birders into creating more accounts to post their findings?

A cardinal, one of the many nice birds I've seen in the last few days 
without reporting to eBird. (Margo D. Beller)

Why? Because some of us would rather concentrate on birding than keeping count and filing electronic paperwork. 

Obviously, I'm no "citizen scientist." I'm just a backyard birder.

So, for what it is worth, here is what I saw or heard in the area of my backyard between Feb. 12 and today, Feb. 14, 2026, with help from Merlin:

Fish crow, American crows, mourning doves, a ton of juncos, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpecker, a red-bellied woodpecker, jay, too many house finches, two female and one male purple finch, male red-breasted nuthatch, titmice, starlings, grackle, robins, mockingbird, two white-breasted nuthatches, a pair of cardinals. 

Not bad, for winter.

Where Are The Birds?

The other day, the one day last week that was not cold, dark and rainy, I went for a long walk as much for exercise as for seeing what birds were around. I went to my usual patch, a linear park not far from me called Patriots Path. 

Patriots Path (Margo D. Beller)

After more than an hour of walking and listening to jays, robins, cardinals, catbirds, Carolina wrens and many other of the more common birds of the area, I was on my way back to the car when I was stopped by a woman walking her dog. "Are you looking for birds?" she asked, looking at my binoculars.

This has happened before, and I wondered if she was going to tell me about seeing some strange bird she couldn't identify. But no. What she said was, "Have you noticed there are fewer birds? Is something environmental happening to them?"

I wasn't sure by "environmental" whether she meant chemicals killing birds, which is certainly a major hazzard. So are cats, both those domestic ones allowed to roam outdoors by their owners and the feral ones I sometimes see passing through my yard.  

To her I blamed the weather, specifically Tropical Storm Ophelia and other storms that have blown through the eastern United States. When Ophelia was going up the coast, the winds were mainly out of the east. If a bird was trying to head south, I said, it would likely go west to avoid the headwinds. "The midwest is probably seeing a bumper crop of birds," I said.

She seemed reassured and thanked me.

A potential bird hazzard, if allowed outside.
(Margo D. Beller)

After I got home I thought about our conversation. Besides chemicals and cats there is the possibility of birds being blown into trees by high winds. Or hit by cars as they fly low across the road (robins and sparrows are prone to this, I've found). 

Then I found this article, which gave me another perspective - a hurricane - Lee - so strong the birds were blown across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, where "common" birds I find daily in my travels are "rarities" over there. Lee, a category 5 storm, blew hard along the East Coast, and I expected to see reports of birds showing up in places where they are normally not found.

That happened with flamingos after Hurricane Idalia, when the pink birds associated with Florida and the tropics started being reported in Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio. One area's "common" is another's "rarity," even within the United States. But I never expected birds to be blown so far to the east by Hurricane Lee.

So are there fewer birds? Depends on where you go. Back in my area I have found lots of the more common birds and, once in a while, a migrant bird passing through on its way to its southern wintering grounds. But that is because I have taken myself outside to look for them. I don't usually go birding in the rain. I don't even put out feeders in the rain. And we've had a ton of rain lately.

The rain-swollen Whippany River along Patriots Path.
(Margo D. Beller)

Maybe the woman I spoke to sees fewer birds now than before because she is out more often with her dog in all types of weather and has more of a basis of comparison. Maybe what she sees confirms what Audubon has warned about the decline in U.S. birds.   

Where are all the birds? I have to believe they are still out there. You and I just have to go find them.

Cardinal Rules

I have always thought the period from late August through October to be the saddest time of the year. If you are not already back in school, you will be. The sun sets long before 8 p.m. Leaves are beginning to turn color and/or fall, as is the case with my old apple tree. The regular baseball season ends in early October.

Cardinal pair (Margo D. Beller)

Many birds are migrating south. I haven't seen a hummingbird at the feeder in quite some time. My mother, who was born in late August, died in mid-October. A dear friend, who was born in mid-October, recently died after a long battle against cancer one day after my mother's birthday.

The somber Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur usually fall in September or October. The anniversary of the worst attack in U.S. history occurred on Sept. 11.

By the time November rolls around you are used to the long, cold, dark nights and can look ahead to Thanksgiving and the winter holidays. But now you realize that the cold nights are going to severely hurt or kill your plants and you start to wonder whether to protect them or let them go.

At the same time, there is life.

Cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

Some plants bloom at this time of year. In my yard are flowering Rose of Sharon and liriope, with the sedum "Autumn Joy" not far behind. Mums dot suburban doorways.

There are still birds in the yard. A catbird calls, white-breasted nuthatch and chickadees come to the thistle sock and the cardinals are calling to each other. And there are young cardinals, too, a late brood for these parents.

Cardinals are among my favorite birds. Their size and coloring makes them easy to pick out in bushes and trees. They come to feeders and sit a while to eat, allowing you to admire and photograph them. In spring the red male feeds his mate as part of the pair bonding. It looks like they are kissing. Unlike a lot of other birds, they mate for life. Audubon painted the pair. The adults call to each other constantly, and the male will sit atop a tree and sing lustily during the breeding season, announcing that THIS is HIS territory.

Audubon's portrait of cardinals
(Margo D. Beller)

Cowbirds will drop eggs into cardinal nests. The young cowbird is usually bigger than the cardinal chicks and either grabs all the food or pushes them from the nest. The adults will feed it anyway out of instinct. I have seen a cowbird chick harassing an adult male cardinal, begging for food, following it wherever it goes until the chick grows big enough to leave and rejoin the cowbird flocks.

And yet, the cardinal is far from endangered. Today I watch young cardinals follow their parents around the shrubs in my backyard. They are nearly fully grown. When young, cardinals are smaller and brown like their mothers, lacking the red crest and bill. That is for their protection. As they get older, the brown females get their red bills and crests, the males start to grow the more familiar red feathers.

Relatively soon after they can fend for themselves, the young cardinals will find mates. When winter comes I might have as many as four cardinal pairs visiting the feeder. It will keep them alive this winter until they can breed and keep the cycle going.

Get Out and Count the Birds!

I was walking in my town one mild afternoon after our most recent snowstorm. Although warmer temperatures melted a lot of it down, much of the white stuff still covered the lawns.

And yet, birds were singing – redbellied woodpeckers, house finches, chickadees, titmice. They are sensing that the worse of winter is over and spring is coming. Who needs the groundhogs?

Somehow, as I was looking ahead, I remembered the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Now, if there is one part of birding I do not like it is keeping complete records. I’ll note what I see but I am not very good about reporting exactly what day I saw what and how may. When I read on the state reporting lists that someone saw 523 herring gulls I have a hard time believing he or she is standing there going one, two, three...

Yet, I enjoy this annual counting of what birds and how many I see at my feeder. The count is co-sponsored by the National Audubon Society (separate from New Jersey Audubon, which is not directly involved in the count) and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. It is held every Presidents Day weekend, which means the 2013 count begins this Friday and lasts through Monday.

What you do is simple – you note the types of birds you see in a particular area and how many of them there are in 15-minute increments. You can look at what comes to your feeder or you can travel to a location and count what you see there.

The count has its own website where you can type in your findings. You can look at last year’s data, see which states had the most of a particular kind of bird (or filed the most checklists) and find photos, ways for kids to get involved, maps and even a Twitter feed. Yes, the count is on Facebook and no, there is no fee.

The aim is to aid science. By contributing an accurate count, you are telling the bird experts at Cornell which birds are the most common and not in danger of extinction and which are declining in numbers. According to the count website, “GBBC participants submitted a record-smashing 104,151 checklists with 17.4 million individual bird observations. Participants set new checklist records in 22 states and in six Canadian provinces. Across the continent and in Hawaii, participants identified 623 species.”

That's a lot of birds.

I took this picture of a pair of one of my
 favorite birds, cardinals, which visit my feeders
at all times of the year.

Participants reported the northern cardinal on more checklists than any other species for the eighth year in a row. I recorded them and was happy to do so since cardinals are one of my favorite birds. Learning the number two bird is the mourning dove was no surprise because these seem to be everywhere I look, sometimes outnumbering its cousin the pigeon.

The most numerous bird reported during the 2012 count was the snow goose, which is surprising to someone who sees more often the larger Canada geese – both migrants and the ones that foul town parks and corporate office campuses. 

If this makes you want to count birds all year long, Cornell and Audubon run eBird, which features, data,  news and features. New Jersey Audubon has its own version of eBird, too.

So whether you are off from school or work, when you are running around this Presidents Day weekend look at the birds around you, note the time and location of what you see, especially how many.

Even counter-phobes like me will be out there doing the same.