Ask Otus: The Sarasota Audubon's Christmas Bird Count

Otus Rufous, an Eastern Screech-owl, was born on Siesta Key and is a full-time resident there. An avid hunter, accomplished vocalist and genuine night owl, Otus is a keen observer of our local wildlife and knows many of nature's secrets. Otus will answer your questions about our amazing wildlife, but only if you Ask Otus™.

Dear Readers,

The holiday season is upon us and I'm delighted to announce that Christmas is for the birds — literally! From Dec. 14 through Jan. 5, thousands upon thousands of volunteers throughout the US will rise before dawn and brave the weather (even possibly missing out on the playoff games) to join in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC), or "The Great Game", as I happily term it. Our local chapter, the Sarasota Audubon Society, will conduct its CBC survey on Saturday, Jan. 4, and I'd like to tell you about the Siesta Key count because, truthfully, it's the only one I know.

What is the purpose of the CBC? "Audubon and other organizations use data collected in this longest-running wildlife census to assess the health of bird populations — and to help guide conservation action." That's proper English for "your health may depend on that of your birds."

Let's say you wake up one morning and realize that you haven't seen or heard our permanent Osprey nesting pair and their offspring in months. For years your family enjoyed visiting the nest and taking photos of the babies. It was fun having the Ospreys around except when one got tangled up in a fishing line and had to be cut free. Now they are gone. You accept the fact they have migrated to better fishing grounds and, after a while, they are just a fond, distant memory.

That's not how the conservations look at it! First of all, our Siesta Key Osprey do not migrate; they are full-time residents here. Second, Ospreys catch and eat fish. People catch and eat fish. By their disappearance the Osprey family, the sentinels of our bay, have alerted us that something is wrong with our Bay and our fish. In other words, all birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, so when we fall silent someone must speak out for us, assess the damage, and lead a rescue mission.

End of a simplistic but serious infomercial. And now, to the fun part of the CBC.

Let's pretend today is Saturday, Jan. 4, and the Siesta Key CBC is on. What game do birds (and housecats scheduled for vet appointments) play best? Hide-and-seek, of course. Birds are natural born hiders. And what specialized skills do people have to join in the seek part of this game? Field experience, book knowledge, methodology, and patience. I say birds and humans are evenly matched. So, let the game begin!

Just after dawn, four Sarasota Audubon CBC team members arrive on the north end of Siesta Key. They will work their way down to Turtle Beach to link up with the new volunteer amateur couple, the "newbies". All four are seasoned, expert birders, bedecked with powerful binoculars, long-distance telephoto camera lenses and a checklist of some 205 bird species likely to be seen around Sarasota County, not necessarily on Siesta Key, but you never know! That's another fun part of the game — spotting the rara avis. The bird guide textbooks will stay in their cars until the four meet up with the amateurs. Then the worn, dog-eared, and scribbled-on reference books are dragged out and used by the team to illustrate to the newbies why they saw a Hairy, not a Downy, woodpecker. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the team has to interpret its language into one comprehensible to the newbies. And the team patiently and most cheerfully share their knowledge and repeat tutorials until they finally almost make sense to the newbies.

At dawn, the amateur couple are suddenly nervous about joining this expert team and are feeling inadequately prepared. When they enthusiastically volunteered for the CBC they knew they had all their ducks all lined up. After all, they have been hunting and cooking wild ducks in Wisconsin for years. Last night they read a Florida Fish and Wildlife study on our native ducks. Over the years, the feral Mallard duck males have been aggressively mating (to put it politely) with our resident Florida Mottled duck females, spawning ducks called the Mallard hybrid. And guess what the Mallard hybrid looks like to a novice birder — a Florida Mottled duck! Uh-oh!

Yesterday was a clear, sunny day and the flash of red on a Pileated woodpecker's crest was as obvious as the buttercup-yellow on the Yellow-throated warbler. Blue jays, Cardinals, and Mourning doves depleted your bird feeder. This morning, the fog rolled in, the temperature dipped considerably; the migrant passerines are hunkered down — gray blobs in the dark shadows of the tree crown canopies. The only sign of life at your bird feeder is a flea-infested tree rat (i.e., gray squirrel) and the power lines are black and bare against the pale sky. The newbies barely distinguish the Great Blue heron at the end of their pier from a piling.

Mother Nature has given us avians a huge advantage in this game. Go Birds, Go!

Oops! I bragged too soon. The pervasive haze makes it a fishing heyday for feathered fish-eaters. No dark shadows warning and scaring off the fish. The magnificent frigate birds arrive. Check. Sharks and dolphins take advantage of this temporary camouflage and drive schools of fish into panicked flight and the pelagic birds — Brown pelicans, Laughing and Herring gulls, and hosts of various Terns — join in the hunt and feast. Check! Check! All five of our south Siesta Key Osprey are sighted (phew!) and Red-shouldered hawk enjoys his hunt in our sand dunes — no bunny wabbits forewarned of his sudden deadly swoop. Check! also for the two rare Reddish-egrets on our beach, the elegant Tricolored heron (whom Audubon called "Our Lady of the Waters") at the pond, and the Common loon in the lagoon. Check! It's a good thing we birds are playing hide-and-seek and not chess!

The Siesta Key CBC team leader is none other than Rick Greenspun. You know him from his Audubon lectures, birding workshops, and his beautiful, lively bird photographs. Over the years that I've observed him seeking while we've been hiding, I've come to the conclusion that he must be part Kingfisher, and one that eats tons of carrots! Rick's knowledge of birds, their habits, voices, flight patterns is a given, but his eyesight is such he'll announce to the team "Northern Gannet directly south of the sailboat on the horizon!" The seasoned members quickly raise binoculars and start commenting "two-year immature, check out the white spots on the coverts, scapulars and axillaries". Stuff like that. The newbie couple are squinting, still searching for the sailboat and wondering "What's a Gannet?" That's when Kathwren (isn't that a dreamy name?), the team's official recorder, will again take out the books and show them what's so spectacular about this Gannet, which flew all the way from Bonaventure Island, Quebec, to our shores just to be counted today. Meanwhile, I'm trying to find "skapewleurs" in my dictionary so I can spell it correctly here.

The Audubon team is checking us off its list one by one. What's worse is the sun is finally peeking through the clouds and it's warmed up a bit. Butterflies and other insects begin flitting about. The smaller birds are hungry and come out from the trees to forage for insects and seeds. Check! for the Solitary vireo (oops! now called Blue-headed vireo), the Mockingbird, Blue-gray gnatcatcher and our lowly, native Palm warbler — lowly because it forages for insects in the grass and makes itself ridiculously easy for the team to spot and check.

I was ratted out fairly early on in the game, found by a mere amateur, a newbie! This is how it happened...Many private property owners have kindly allowed the team access to their land this day and as the team and this totally clueless amateur birder couple are walking from the Gulf to Little Sarasota Bay, a resident parking his car yells out to them (team members can't be mistaken for anything other than birders or concerned citizens investigating a UFO crash site behind a neighbor's barn) "Looking for Otus? Third lower branch on that oak over there." Check! I ought to feel flattered that I'm counted because I'm not rare, just ... Oh, never mind. But, by a newbie? Not fair! What a dumb game.

Early afternoon, Rick and his team have left the amateurs in charge with careful instructions to report only unchecked species. The 273 Brown pelicans flying south this morn are flying north at dusk and the Tricolored heron has left the pond for the Bay. Don't count the same birds twice! While noshing at Turtle Beach Pub, the couple, now comfortable with their new authority and responsibilities, are thrilled to see six Black-hooded parrots (now called Nanday parakeets) land on the power lines. At dusk, a Spotted sandpiper visits their dock. They can't yet identify either species with certainty so they email photos to Rick or Kathwren. Check! Check! Neither species were sighted until just now. It's obvious the newbies learned so much and are enthusiastically caught up in the spirit of the game. Or perhaps they've contracted avian flu? (Yes, I'm a sore loser!)

The CBC ends at midnight. It is now late evening. The team's work grinds on. Rick is home fielding questions, identifying bird photos and sorting through amateur birders' UFO reports — bird pix can be very difficult or impossible to i.d. when blurry! That Pileated woodpecker looks like a woman's running shoe missing some Velcro. Kathwren is organizing and coordinating the checklist data. Final submissions to the local and national CBC coordinators are due soon. Someone reported a Swainson's hawk at Red Bug Slough. An impossible sighting in Sarasota? Probably. But, as Sam Spade said in the Maltese Falcon, it's "the stuff dreams are made of; so, tomorrow, the birders will be there at dawn for a look, just in case.

"Everyone can participate" in the CBC. Without sounding too gung-ho, because it's not everyone's cup of bird seed, I'd like to encourage readers to participate. If the concept intrigues you and the "Great Game" grabs your fancy, please email Glynnis  or Marcy Packer your name and the area where you live. And I should mention that backyard birders are most welcome.

Enjoy your holidays and keep your eye on the birdie!

Otus