It wasn’t a good day to be outside counting birds. It was bitingly cold. A drizzly rain left trails and paths muddy and slippery, and our binoculars kept fogging up.
But Jan. 3 had been scheduled months ago as the day for the annual Intown Atlanta Christmas Bird Count. Rain or shine, cold or warm, the count would go on.
So, some 85 of us birders — including several youngsters aged 6-14 — braved the elements to tally all the birds we could see or hear during the day within a 15-mile-wide circle centered near the intersection of Briarcliff Road and Ponce de Leon Avenue.
Divided into 13 teams, we combed city parks, nature preserves, parking lots, power line right-of-ways, cemeteries, lakes and ponds, golf courses, ballfields, PATH Foundation trails and other places to count birds. We peered into backyards (with homeowners’ permission) to include birds at feeders.
At day’s end, we gathered at the East Atlanta home of count coordinator Joy Carter (also president of the Atlanta Audubon Society) to tally our results — and swap stories of the day’s adventures over glasses of wine and cider and bowls of hot soup and chili from three big pots simmering on the stove.
A team leader said his group watched in awe during the day as a red-tailed hawk snatched a pigeon with its talons and then took the hapless pigeon to a nearby tree limb to commence eating it in plain view of the birders.
Another team told of finding some 30 Eastern meadowlarks at a city landfill in East Atlanta. Carter told of her group stopping at Glen Emerald Park lake, near Bouldercrest Road, to look for a pied-billed grebe seen there the previous year. “We didn’t see the grebe, but we did see two double-crested cormorants on the lake, which was pretty neat,” she said.
Then, it was adding-up time. Final tally: 80 species, just shy of last year’s count of 84 species. Given the harsh weather, the final sum was a pleasant surprise. Despite the cold, the rain, the mud and the fog, it had been a wonderful day.
In the sky: The moon will be last-quarter Tuesday, rising around midnight and setting around lunchtime, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mercury and Venus are low in the west just after dark. Mars sets in the west a few hours after sunset. Jupiter rises out of the east around 8 p.m. Saturn rises out of the east around 3 a.m. and will appear near the moon Thursday night.
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