By Sonya Carson — Correspondent
In Concord, yuletide traditions include trimming trees, singing carols, hanging stockings — and, for some, counting birds.
Participants in the 2024 Concord Christmas Bird Count, the town’s 65th annual, persisted through heavy fog on Sunday, December 29.
Peter Alden, a birder who has been an aficionado since childhood, spearheads the event.
“We have the headquarters of Mass Audubon in neighboring Lincoln; we have our own bird book on the birds of Concord,” he says, noting that Concord has the longest record of bird life “going way, way back in the early 1800s.”
”We’re proud of our continuous record for inland locality,” he says.
Pre-dawn recon
The count began in darkness at 5 a.m., with separate coalitions around town — there were groups in Concord Center, West Concord, Great Meadows, and more. Early morning birders listened for owls hooting through the trees. The tally concluded around 4:15 p.m.
“We each have a region to cover, and we figure out how we’re going to do it. We have a strategy of approaching it,” says Concord birder Julia Yoshida, who led the Great Meadows sector. Counters are usually experienced and identify birds by sight or sound within seconds.
One of several thousand seasonal counts nationwide, Concord’s tally is striking in its level of participation and coverage area, spanning a 15-mile diameter from Carlisle to Framingham.
Though looking for birds in the cold might seem counterintuitive, Alden says counting is best in winter. There’s no poison ivy, no Lyme disease — and no leaves on trees to have to peer through.
Citizen scientists
Bird counting is one of the largest citizen scientific efforts in the U.S. Many Concord counters are year-round birders and members of clubs like the Brookline Bird Club and the Nuttall Ornithological Club, of which Alden is vice president.
However, “it is scientific because we do the same survey at the same locations every year, so you have that data to compare from one year to the next,” says Cris van Dyke, a Concord birder and photographer who led the Concord Center sector.
From lifetimes of birding, Alden and Yoshida have noticed changes they attribute to climate change, such as some birds wintering further north.
“I think the significance is not in the singletons, but I think what we reveal is a trend. And it’s a numeric trend, like, ‘What is happening to this species of sparrow over a decade?’” Yoshida says.
“It’s tough for me to really pinpoint specific things, [but] I can tell you that it’s palpable that the number of individual birds is down.”
Birders say the hobby is fulfilling in a variety of ways –– intellectual stimulation (through the senses and memory recall), physical activity in walking, and the sense of community.
Van Dyke began birding in 2019 after breaking both ankles, leaving her unable to play tennis.
“Great Meadows was a place I could go and walk. I had my camera. Then I started meeting the birders, and then I started joining them,” she says.
“Our group is so close. We get together socially.”
Starlings, merlins and wrens, oh my!
In the 2024 count, about 100 Concord birders recorded 60 species. Those included woodpeckers, Carolina wrens, robins, bluebirds, starlings, merlins, and a single snow bunting.
“We found 94 of the hundreds of wild turkeys in town but still no trace for decades of the once-common pheasant and ruffed grouse,” Alden says.
“I like getting to a place where you can pick and choose what part of nature you’re interested in,” he adds.
“It could be flowers or butterflies or birds. But it’s nice to be able to go walk in the woods, and any bird I see, I know; and everything I hear, in most cases, I know what that bird is.”
