Christmas Bird Count: The Event
Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife
The four counties of the Rio Grande Valley; Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy. There are more bird species have been recorded in those counties, than in 46 of the 50 United States.
Joshua Rose is a Natural Resource Specialist at the World Birding Center at the Bentsen Rio-Grande Valley State Park The Center is hosting a Christmas Bird Count on January 2nd.
Everyone that wants to conduct a Christmas Bird Count, they submit to the National Audubon Society. They draw out a circle and if they circle doesn’t overlap with any other count circle, then the Audubon Society approves it. Each circle is supposed to be fifteen miles in diameter. We divide the circle up into different zones and then we recruit a whole bunch of volunteers and we assign those volunteers each to one of those zones in the circle.
Birders can make the count as competitive as they want.
When we divide up our zones for the count and assign our teams, we also tend to assign the different teams different amounts of time. So certain teams will have a smaller area; they can cover the whole area and count all the birds in five or six hours. Where as the really hardcore, borderline insane people, like myself, will start before dawn and keep going until after dark.
More information on Christmas Bird Counts available at passporttotexas.org.
That’s our show…with research and writing help from Kate Lipinski… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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