2014 Christmas Bird Count – Recap

This year’s Aspen area Audubon Christmas Bird Count was a successful and enjoyable day for the 15+ participants who helped census local birds within the designated 15-mile diameter circle in which our local count takes place. After nearly 3 weeks of warm, sunny weather, count day brought a return to winter. The day was cloudy with light-to-moderate snow falling off and on. This type of weather causes some of the birds to hunker down. Thus, our count results were a bit lower than other years when weather was more favorable to bird activity. But even low numbers constitutes meaningful data in this citizen science project.

2014 CBC group at Hallam Lake. Photo by Dick Filby.

A single Northern Shoveler was the stand-out unusual species this year, observed in Snowmass Village at the Water/Sanitation ponds. This duck is usually observed in our area during migration, but it is unusual to see it here during winter.

Our total species count was 41, which only includes species identified on the count day (data for species identified during the count week is crunched separately). To put this in perspective, the highest species count comes from a circle in Ecuador (over 500!), and the lowest comes from a count circle in Northern Alaska (1, common raven).  We joined over 50,000 other citizen scientists who have and will continue to participate in this year’s CBC which extends through early January across North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean. Many thanks to all who joined us at ACES. Thanks also to the Snowmass Ski Patrol and Snow Safety (Nathan Garfield), Snowmass Guest Services (Stephanie Peterman), and our feeder-watching crews.

Join us for Birding with ACES on January 6, and our evening Owl Walk series at Rock Bottom Ranch, kicking off on January 20. 

Aspen CBC data | December 14, 2014 

cw – count week
sp – species 

~ Rebecca Weiss, ACES Bird Guide