Welcome to the first day of winter and also the shortest day of the year. The season officially arrives at 7:11 p.m. Saturday — the winter solstice, or the time of year in the Northern hemisphere when the sun is at its southernmost point in the sky.
For many people, the winter solstice conjures up images of ice, snow and bitter cold. For bird lovers like me, it means bird-counting time — the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Counts (CBC).
The 29 CBCs scheduled in Georgia this season began last weekend and will continue through Jan. 5. They cover areas across the state, from remote St. Catherines Island on the coast to the Chattahoochee National Forest Songbird Management Area near Chatsworth in the mountains. A schedule is at www.gos.org.
This week I participated in Georgia’s newest CBC, officially known as the Roswell CBC but also covering portions of Sandy Springs and the Chattahoochee River corridor. Counting teams scoured the river from a canoe or tromped around public parks, golf courses, ball fields, private estates and neighborhoods to count all the birds they could see or hear during the day.
For our team, which included veteran birders Chris Lambrecht, Barbara Gray and Atlanta Audubon Society president Joy Carter, our first stop was Sandy Springs’ Morgan Falls Overlook Park at the edge of Bull Sluice Lake on the Chattahoochee. There, we found our biggest prizes of the day — a bald eagle and an osprey flapping over the river.
At the nearby Steel Canyon Golf Course, built atop an old county landfill, Chris and I borrowed a golf cart and drove around the links before golfers showed up. We were amazed by the several flocks of robins, song sparrows and other birds, including killdeer and a large flock of Canada geese, that we saw on the links.
Along a wooded trail in Sandy Springs, a Cooper’s hawk flew over us and suddenly there was a silence as small songbirds took cover to avoid becoming prey for the hawk. Along another trail, a raucous murder of crows dive-bombed a hapless red-shouldered hawk above us.
Altogether, our team tallied 49 species. With all teams reporting, the day’s total was 84 species — a good number.
Merry Christmas.
IN THE SKY: The Ursid meteor shower, visible through Tuesday night, reaches a peak Saturday night of about 15 meteors per hour, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. The moon will be last quarter on Wednesday. Venus is in the west at dusk and sets about two hours later. Mars rises out of the east just before midnight and will appear close to the moon on Wednesday night. Jupiter rises out of the east at dusk and is visible all night. Saturn rises out of the east a few hours before dawn.
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