Gila River Christmas Bird Count

The Gila River Christmas Bird Count was conducted on Saturday, December 27th, in what was predicted to be good weather most of the previous week. By Thursday it was looking rather doubtful, but it's New Mexico and if it rained it would probably be showers, right? But the day of the count it was a steady rain. Despite the lousy weather conditions, 25 hardy souls showed up to count birds, most getting quite wet in the process. Fortunately, the rain stopped by 1:00, giving everyone a chance to dry out.

You would think the rain would severely decrease the bird count, at least I did. But in comparing total numbers from previous years that wasn’t the case. In fact, there were approximately 500 more birds counted on this survey than in 2023, when we had gorgeous weather. This survey produced a total of 4420 birds in 94 species. The number of species has varied between 105 and 93 in the past 6 years. We also had a high count of what are considered rare species for our area in December. These were: Hammond;s Flycatcher, Pacific Wren, Lawrence’s Goldfinch, Common Yellowthroat, and 2 sightings of Barn Owls.

The CBC surveys are a community science effort that has been conducted for 126 years. An example of why these long term trends are vitally important can be seen by looking at our CBC numbers for Wild Turkeys. In December only 3 were counted, but in 2024 the total was 116. There are many factors affecting bird counts and they can vary widely from year to year.

A huge thank you to all the counters this year, who showed up despite the weather!

Linda Moore compiler