The 104th Annual Christmas Bird Count will take place on Saturday, December
18, 2004 beginning at 7:30 am, at Miami University's Ecology Research
Center, Somerville Road according to Larry Sherman, Coordinator, [available
by phone at 513-523-2458 or via e mail to shermalw@muohio.edu]. This is
the 74th Oxford count. The Oxford, Ohio, CBC had its unofficial beginning
in 1931 when Dr. Robert Hefner made a Christmas Day census finding 50 birds
of 11 species. In 1933 Dr. Hefner changed the count format to include
the entire Christmas week. The Christmas week censuses were run until
1936 when the official CBC rules were adopted. Dr. Hefner submitted
the 1937 count results to Bird-Lore for publication with the
official CBCs, but they were rejected due to some mionor inaccuracies. Finally,
with the 1938 count the Oxford CBC was officially recognized and its results
were published in Bird-Lore. This year our dawn-to-dusk
census of local bird species covers a circle fifteen miles in diameter,
centered near Oxford, Ohio and is conducted according to rules of the National
Audubon Society.
This year will mark the 105th anniversary of the original Audubon Christmas Bird Count which began on Christmas Day, 1900. It now incorporates more than 1600 bird counts and involves more than 50,000 participants, throughout the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. territories, Canada, Bermuda, parts of Mexico, the Caribbean and the Pacific islands. The data collected for each count are sent to the National Audubon Society, which publishes the complete results each year in the Christmas Bird Count issue of the Audubon Field Notes. Anyone wishing to participate in the 2003 Oxford Christmas Count is invited to meet at the Ecological Research Center on Oxford-Somerville Road at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 20th.
New participants are welcome, regardless of experience, since groups are formed and lead by experts. The groups will cover each portion of the count area. A registration fee of $6.00 from each participant helps pay for processing and publication of the data, as well as the hot lunch served by the Oxford Audubon Society (bring your own service), which, as sponsor of the local count, pays the registration fee for any new participants.
Count areas will include Springwood, Four Mile Creek, the Bachelor Wildlife Preserve, Indian Creek, Rush Run, Hueston's Woods State Park-Acton Lake and the Miami Airport. In addition to the field count, reports from birdwatchers at home are welcome at any time on the day of the count, especially those who may see unusual birds at their feeders. Liz Woedl will be taking these calls throughout the day of December 18 at 513-523-1782. Soon after the count the results will be available from the Audubon Miami Valley's web site at: