Christmas Bird Count

Local birders across the country eagerly participate in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count!  This year is Audubon’s 127th Christmas Bird Count, and our club’s 65th consecutive year of participation. Our tradition is to start the new year off by counting all the birds we can find within our 15-mile diameter Ithaca count circle on January 1st.  The data from the count is used to map species distribution and abundance of birds across North America as well as areas of South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. In our 2026 count, 160 observers reported 95 species on the day and 102 for the week (i.e., including birds detected 3 days before and 3 days after the 1st of January).  

Within the 15-mile diameter Ithaca count circle, shown below, we have nine areas, each with their own hotspots. Below is a map of the Ithaca count circle areas in two formats (printable PDF and interactive Google Map).

There are many options for participation and your input is invaluable at all levels. You can choose a count area or stay at home to count birds that come to feeders in your yard. You can count owls in the very early morning, or wait until it has warmed up a bit to go out on your own or with others. Dress warmly, be sure to have some hot beverages and get out and enjoy the day.  Use eBird to record your counts (see instructions here).  Want to learn more?  See a recent WHCU article, "What you need to know about this year’s Christmas Bird Count" or listen to the 2023 WHCU interview with Paul Anderson: Cayuga Bird Club Christmas bird count an all around success.

Count areas:

• 1. Colleen Richards - West Dryden, Hile School Road area. Open fields, secondary growth fields, and woodlots.  Roadside viewing, some trails and walking along the roads.

  2. Bob McGuire - Fall Creek area (Varna to Freeville), Mount Pleasant, Neimi/Hanshaw Road. Woodlands, fields, stream edges.  All on foot - some paved roads, some trails.

  3. Gwen Gallagher - Beam Hill, Yellow Barn & Irish Settlement Roads, Hammond Hill, much of the Village of Dryden & the northern end of the Jim Schug Trail in Dryden. Includes hotspots such as Roy Park Preserve North and South and Hammond Hill State Forest. Pine and spruce forests.  A mix of car-birding, variable trails (everything from village sidewalks to unpaved hilly paths) and roadside birding.

  4. Laura Stenzler - Ellis Hollow area, Snyder Hill, Ringwood, Belle Sherman area. Woodlands and fields, suburban residential and easy access along quiet roads, East Ithaca recway, Cornell game farm and compost piles. 

  5. Sandy Podulka - Six Mile Creek gorge, Brooktondale area. Our largest area, good birding and hiking. 

  6. Maia Ginsburg - Danby area, Ithaca College, South Hill Nature Area East, Finger Lakes Trail, and Buttermilk Falls. This area "has it all": Wegmans for the downtown /parking lot feel, hiking trails, biking trails, roadside, and parks both suburban and more rural, like Dotson. 

  7. Jared Dawson - West side of Cayuga Lake, Bostwick Road, Mecklenberg Road. 

  8. Ken Rosenberg - Stewart Park, Ithaca, Cayuga Heights and Cornell Campus.  Birding mostly on foot.

  9. Tracy McLellan - East shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca airport, Lansing area. Fields, woodlots.  A mix of car-birding, walkable trails and roadside birding.

If you choose to stay home and count birds at your feeders, write down the total time you spend watching, the species you see (or hear), and the maximum number of birds of each species seen at any one time. (This is the same protocol as Project Feederwatch). Donna Scott, our club volunteer, will be answering calls (607-379-1694) between 4:00pm and 6:00pm to record your tallies for each species. Please note that this is a personal phone number, only to be used to report feeder counts between 4-6pm on January 1, 2027. 

The compilation gathering will in person and once again featured a dish-to-pass dinner, and will be held at the Foundation of Light on Sunday January 3, 2026.  A presentation of the our compilation results will be presented after the dinner.

2026 Results

2026 Result Spreadsheet (final data)

2026 Summary Report (PDF)

2026 Compilation Dinner recording: https://youtu.be/AvzA902hCWI

More Information on the Audubon Count

Counts are submitted to Audubon, where the data from all of the count circles are compiled. A summary report is published each year and all CBC data is available on the Audubon website: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count. We urge you to browse this site to evaluate the importance and scope of this ongoing count. You can see results, view photos, and get more detailed information for all of the count regions. In addition to more than 2000 count circles throughout the United States, counts are conducted in Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands. The data that is gathered through this huge and historic effort is invaluable and is available for anyone to access—high school students doing a project, newspaper reporters writing about bird population trends, or scientists doing research. The recent report in Science about the loss of North American birds included Christmas Bird Count data as part of the analysis. [Decline of the North American avifauna,   Kenneth V. Rosenberg, Adriaan M. Dokter, et al., Science  04 Oct 2019:  Vol. 366, Issue 6461, pp. 120-124. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6461/120].

The Christmas Bird Count is a free program. Audubon does request though, that you consider making a donation in support of their huge task of data compilation and analysis. Go to this link to do so: https://action.audubon.org/donate.

Resources for Count Day

• Guide on what data to collect (alternate source)

• Guide to party miles and hours (alternate source)