One hundred and twenty-five years later, the Christmas Bird Count is going strong
Note: This article appears on pp. 8–9 of the Dec. 2025 issue of Birding, published by the American Birding Association. Join the ABA to get Birding and all the other benefits of membership in the association.
I remember with crystal clarity the events of that cold morning in 1982. “After having quickly breakfasted,” according to my journal entry for the day, “I headed toward [the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Pittsburgh] on a cold December 18th. Although the stars were still quite visible and the eastern horizon still dark, I heard a Killdeer give its shrill cry in the night sky.”
Thus began my first Christmas Bird Count (CBC). I close my eyes, now nearly 43 years later, and I am a freshman in high school again. The pavement is hard, the night air is still; I breathe in the scent of chimney smoke, and I hear a disembodied voice, dee dee DEE. It’s as if I know, somehow I just know, that I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life.
On Dec. 14 of this year, I’ll be a participant again in the CBC. Not in Pittsburgh. Rather, in Boulder, Colorado, where I’ve been based now for more than half my birding life.
The 2025 Boulder CBC will be, in many respects, a reenactment of the events of Dec. 18, 1982. Chances are, it will be cold and clear. It usually is in Boulder at that time of the year. It definitely will be dark. Because you have to start birding on count day at or before the break of dawn; that’s the tradition. Given where my sector is, the first bird of the “day,” crying out in the darkness, probably won’t be a Killdeer—although that’s not out of the question, either.
There will be other convergences. We’ll break for lunch in the field, just as we did in 1982. Along the way, there will be some moments of excitement—a “good” bird or two, perhaps even a rarity. And there will be slower stretches—never boring on count day, that’s not possible, but quieter. And a compilation, of course, with ample food and drink. Remember the scene in A Christmas Carol where the Second of the Three Spirits shows Scrooge that outlandishly scrumptious feast?—Every CBC compilation I’ve ever attended has been like that. You could eat 8,000 calories at the Boulder CBC compilation, and given that I will have been birding, and birding hard, since 0-dark-30 on count day this year, I just might.
My CBC sector in Boulder is the one where they send the newbies. By request. To be clear, my request. I like to go birding with people I’ve never met before. (And it adds a happy element of nervous drama if our first contact is under cover of darkness. I’ve met some of my best birding buds that way.) Anyhow, it’s not unlikely that there will be a ninth-grader in my group this year.
It’s interesting to contemplate what the world will look like 43 years from now, when that young birder is my present age. Chances are, I won’t be around to see it; family history and basic demography militate against that outcome. But the kid likely will be. And I hope they’re keeping a field notebook. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Be well,
Keep in touch,
And good birding!
Editor, Birding
To join a Christmas Bird Count, go to tinyurl.com/join-CBC.
Alongside Frank Izaguirre and Michael Retter, Ted Floyd proudly serves as Editor of Birding, a position he has held since 2002. He is broadly engaged in other initiatives of the ABA, especially those involving young birders, online content, and ambassadorship to the birding community; catch his musings about “Random Birds” on the American Birding podcast. Ted is the author of eight bird books and 200+ articles on birds and nature. Also, he is a frequent speaker at bird festivals and scientific conferences, and he has taught math, statistics, and biology to everyone from second graders to advanced graduate students. Ted lives outside Boulder, Colorado, where the steep foothills of the Rockies meet the western Great Plains in one of the most dramatic ecotones on Earth.
