The Christmas Bird Count

(Image credit:  Jim Bauer)

 Frank Chapman was an ornithologist, publisher of Bird-Lore magazine, and curator of birds at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History at the turn of the 20th century.
He enjoyed Christmas as much as anyone, but there was one yuletide tradition he abhorred:
 “side hunts,” in which groups of people divided into teams and spent the day roaming the countryside shooting every animal they came across. The hunted included rabbits, foxes, squirrels, and plenty of birds. Not for food -hardly any animals were eaten- but for sport. At the end of the day each team counted their kills, and the team that had the most animals was the winner.
 Chapman wanted to come up with a replacement for the side hunts that wouldn’t involve the pointless slaughter of so many animals, especially birds.
Why not count the birds without killing them, in a “Christmas Bird Count”?
 He published his idea in Bird-Lore magazine and on Christmas Day 1900, 27 people (many of them Chapman’s friends and colleagues) in 25 locations around the United States and Canada went out and counted all the birds they could find.
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