Philip Barbour was talking about the 30th annual Audubon Sidon Christmas Bird Count Saturday.
“Even if you have zero experience, you are welcome to join us,” said Barbour, a newly retired Natural Resources Conservation Service wildlife biologist. He expects 10 to 15 people to take part, including several who have participated many times.
Participants in the count will be grouped into teams that count every bird seen within a 15-mile-diameter circle centered in Mathews Brake National Wildlife Refuge, which borders the Barbour family’s home place on County Road 511 close to Sidon. Each team is assigned to one of four quadrants within the circle.
The count will begin at 5:30 a.m. and end at 5:30 p.m. Barbour said many participants don’t arrive at his house, which is the meeting place, at 5:30 a.m. However, he’ll be counting birds before sunrise.
“I am going to be out looking for owls,” he said. “The owls we expect to see are the eastern screech owl, great horned owl and barred owl. ... We have barn owl on the list, but we have only seen it a couple of times.”
He continued, “I will come back to my house at daylight to see who has shown up.” Then, the teams will be organized. “They go out and count every bird that they see.”
Since he started the Sidon count, 148 species have been viewed. He doesn’t expect to see that many on Saturday: “We should get about 100 to 110. That would be really good.”
Barbour didn’t have figures at his fingertips for how many birds have been counted over 30 years, but the number is huge. “It is not uncommon for us to have flocks of geese,” he explained. “Five hundred thousand would not be unexpected. Snow geese come and winter down here, and they move around in big flocks.
“I have 16 species of birds that have only been seen one time,” he said. The species are Brant (a goose), long-tail duck, American white pelican, snowy egret, black-neck stilt, American avocet, spotted sandpiper, laughing gull, Anna’s hummingbird, peregrin falcon, vermillion flycatcher, yellow warbler, northern water thrush, Wilson’s warbler, dickcissel and Baltimore oriole.
People should bring binoculars and perhaps a bird book — plus “everything they need for being in the field for a day.”
Dress for the weather. “If it is pouring down rain, we are still going to do it,” Barbour said. “Knee-high rubber boots are always good.”
He’s counted birds in the brake every year, even after an ice storm. “I went ahead and made the count, but nobody else made it,” he said.
This year marks Audubon’s 120th annual Christmas Bird Count, which is taking place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 across the United States, Canada and other countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Barbour will download data to Audubon’s website at Cornell University, as will other count compilers.
The Sidon count has become a family event for members of the Barbour family. Some will travel from Nashville, Memphis and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be there. “It’s a lot of fun,” Barbour said.
The Barbour house is located at 28534 County Road 511. For more information, call or text Barbour at 458-2989 or Katherine Barbour at 458-2968.
• Contact Susan Montgomery at 581-7233 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com
