Each winter--in cooperation with the National Audubon Society--Hilton Pond Center implements and compiles the Christmas Bird Count (CBC) for York/Rock Hill in York County, South Carolina (see map above). Christmas Bird Counts--perhaps the first big organized citizen science effort--originated 111 years ago as an alternative to traditional holiday bird hunts when folks young and old used newly gifted guns to see who could bring down the most birds. For that first CBC in 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman organized 25 counts from Toronto to Pacific Grove CA and involved 27 participants who tallied 89 combined species. That's a far cry from 2010 when 2,215 CBCs in the United States, Canada & Latin America involved more than 60,000 participants who tallied more than 61 million birds, with 646 species in just the U.S.

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We started the York/Rock Hill count in 1991 to help provide a snapshot of numbers and species of winter birds present in central York County--in the heart of the Carolina Piedmont Region. Beginning before sunrise and finishing at dusk, participants identify and tally birds seen and/or heard in an area inscribed by a standard circle 15 miles in diameter (see map above) and centered where Tools Fork Creek flows beneath SC Hwy 5 (West Main Street) just west of Northwestern High School. (Count-center coordinates are 34° 57' 23.57" N, 81º 06' 24.64" W; in decimal degrees that's N34.956547, W81.106844.) Participants are assigned one or more of the circle's 11 sectors and are expected to spend the day covering the area(s) by car and on foot--perhaps even by canoe or bicycle! This year our York/Rock Hill CBC--normally held the Saturday before Christmas--was on 17 December.

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Count founder and compiler Bill Hilton Jr. (participant on all 21 York/Rock Hill CBCs), Bob Olson (14-year veteran), Faye Metzl (13 years), Gail Driscoll (4 years), and first-timer Hilda Flamholtz assembled at 6:15 a.m. in Rock Hill at the Burger King on S.C. 5, ate breakfast, got assignments and tally sheets, and spread out to their assigned sectors in an attempt to reach prime observation sites before daylight. (Jewel Reavis, a five-year vet, joined us at midday and Hilda departed mid-afternoon.) The count started out partly cloudy, with a slight breeze out of the north-northeast and a temperature of 42 degrees; standing water such as rain-muddied Hilton Pond (above) and Lake Wylie were not frozen.

The morning hours were among the slowest we have experienced for a Christmas Bird Count--or on any day in the field in these parts. Feeder watchers reported little activity; anticipated flocks of American Robins and various blackbirds did not materialize; and many woodland species and birds of the Broomedge fields (above right) that normally swell the tallies shortly after first light were nowhere to be seen. Even numbers of waterfowl and other water-loving species at usually productive Ebenezer Point on Lake Wylie were low. It is hard to analyze cause-and-effect relationships in nature, but it's likely the scarcity of birds was due to several factors--including a relatively warm fall and winter and the fact that the usual assemblage of cold-weather migrants hadn't come down yet. It wasn't helpful that last year's incursion of Pine Siskins and Purple Finches doesn't look like it will repeat this winter.

Nonetheless, thanks to the dedicated bushwacking of our inveterate counters, we still managed to locate 61 species of birds--lower than our 21-year average of 65.3 or our all-time high of 80 (set in 2000), but much better than last year's abyssmal 51. We also tallied 2,581 individual birds--less than half our average of 5,234 and well below our record of 12,945 set in 1994 when we were indundated by European Starlings and American Robins.

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Those robins (male above) finally did show up for the afternoon of the 2011 count to become this year's most common species with 961 individuals, followed by 171 Bonaparte's Gulls, 115 Red-winged Blackbirds, 104 Canada Geese, and 103 Cedar Waxwings. Conspicuous in their absence were such regular species as Brown-headed Cowbird (a good sign?), Common Grackle (the big blackbird flock never appeared), Sharp-shinned Hawk, Swamp Sparrow, Hermit Thrush, and Pine Warbler, and both Northern Bobwhite and Loggerhead Shrike (whose numbers have plummeted across the Carolina Piedmont, and elsewhere). A few of those missing species--and several others--were observed sometime during Count Week (the three days before and after 17 December), as noted by "CW" in the table below.

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Ducks were few and far between, with only nine Buffleheads and a solitary Ring-necked Duck to show for our efforts. We've never quite firgured out how all the Wood Ducks that breed locally--even on Hilton Pond--seem to disappear during our Christmas Bird Counts.

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Although we did see both vulture Species--Black (11 individuals) and Turkey (15, above)--we lament the departure many of these important scavengers due to York County's switch to transporting food waste rather than burying it at the local landfill. prior to that change it was common to tally 300-plus vultures during our annual Christmas Bird Count. Alas, this year central York County apparently hosted no winter hummers during our count period, even though numbers of Rufous Hummingbirds and other vagrant species were up across much of the eastern U.S.

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This year 20 species we observed met or surpassed our 21-year average, with House Wren and Southern Bald Eagle tying their all-time highs: One and two, respectively. Eagles have rebounded nicely in the vicinity of Lake Wylie and we're glad to have them in our count area. Incidentally, 29 species on our list of 109 species recorded for the York/Rock Hill circle have been seen on every one of our 21 counts, including Red-shouldered Hawk (adult above).

Next year's York/Rock Hill count will be on 22 December 2012. For further info or to participate, contact us via E-mail or by phone at (803) 684-5852 on or before 20 December. Accounts of our past 11 CBCs are linked from Christmas Count Main. For a complete list of birds seen in 2011, please refer to Table 1 below. It includes all-time highs and 21-year averages for all species observed on CBCs since 1991.

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All text, maps & photos © Hilton Pond Center