Reflections in a Yellowing Checklist: CBCs Past and Present

Accipiter versus robin (photo by Tim Wallace on Jan 1, 2010)

 My last surviving parent died last January. I talk occasionally to my sister in Arizona and I keep in touch with one cousin who lives locally. Otherwise, the longest continuous thread in my life is as a birder and particularly my participation in Christmas Bird Counts. I went on my first CBC in 1967, a year after I started birding. It was the Evanston North Shore Count, and by 1969 or so I was covering the same basic territory I do today. So I can not help but feel nostalgic when CBC time comes around and afterwards I think about the changes.

Maybe six years ago, I was with Caroline Fields when we were checking the remnants of what had once been a highly productive conifer plantation in Lake Forest (west of Route 43, between Half Day and Old Mill Roads). I commented that on one cold day we had a northern goshawk there on the count. She asked when that was. Forced to think about it a moment, I sheepishly replied, “1968.” Houses now surround the site, and though there are still some pines left, they have been so thinned I no longer even make a visit.

Then there was the horse farm I checked out during the Waukegan Count. One year we found eight Brewer’s blackbirds, a very rare bird on CBCs in northeastern Illinois. Amazingly, they showed up again next year as well. The third year, however, they were gone- but so was the farm, replaced by a subdivision that retains the name of the farm. (My late friend Hollis Baker once said that there ought to be a prohibition against naming a development after something it destroyed. I still bristle at names like Egret Acres or Oak Knoll Estates)

It is not surprising, of course, that vegetation gives way to the inexorable oozing of anthropogenic structures across the landscape. But the unexpected still happens. I mentioned in the blog that on the North Shore count we park at one end and then walk towards cars at the other along a narrow bank squeezed between backyard fences and the channel of the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River (as far as I know, that particular river system does not have any named twigs). One year we parked in the regular spot, just south of Lake-Cook Road. We then drove to our northern parking location to begin the hike. Imagine the surprise when we followed the channel to its intersection with Lake-Cook only to find the car a quarter of a mile west of where we were expecting. The river course itself had been altered over the intervening year.

Although more ephemeral, the people I do this with have changed greatly as well. When I started participating in the North Shore CBC, the team leader was Richard Horowitz, the person who started me birding in November 1966. He would drop me and whomever else was unfortunate enough to be along at a point along the West Fork north of where we go today: there were places along that route where you literally had to drop to hands and knees to avoid sliding into the water. Of course, being teenagers, we found the task to be merely a bit challenging and not the impossibility it would be today. Richard has long since left this area, and has been on the staff of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for his entire career.

Tim Wallace, a veterinarian, has been a great companion in recent years on the Waukegan count when he is not scheduled to be on standby at his clinic. He is also a regular on North Shore but he covers a different portion than I do. Indeed there are times when I assign possible comrades to other areas needing people, thereby leaving me worrying if I will have anyone. And for the ferrying operation, I do need at least one other person for a minimum of an hour or so. Fortunately the Willinks eagerly agreed to come. Last year it was Jennifer Schmidt, who over the last few seasons has managed to make either North Shore or Waukegan.

Given the role that the CBCs have played for me, I am a little concerned that they don’t generate the excitement they used to. It seems every year the burden of compiling gets a little bit more unpleasant. For the Waukegan CBC, permission to cover various areas requires contacting eight different entities- forest preserve district, US Navy, electric utility, state park, two different corporate sites, private park, and religious college. (It is true that some of those entities are used to us by now and permission is easily granted and a number of the team leaders are now making direct contacts themselves.) The birds aren’t as good as they used to be, and it is more physically demanding to cover some of the same ground. Maybe that is at the heart of my malaise- the counts remind that I am getting old. So what else is new?

Owlers Tim "Andean llama herder" (or Heidi wannabe)Wallace and Jennifer "I am not frozen yet" Schmidt with blue moon over her left shoulder on Jan. 1, 2010.

Rich Biss, Gary Hantsbarger, and Joe Suchecki at the Waukegan CBC countdown on Jan 1, 2010.

Incentives for completing CBC regardless of the weather (Waukegan CBC countdown)