Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Difficult Christmas count yields sighting of 'Santa Claus bird'

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Tuesday, December 26, 2000

Difficult Christmas count yields sighting of 'Santa Claus bird'

For birders, the Christmas Bird Count is the biggest day of the year. Started in 1907 by the National Audubon Society, the count was designed to protest the traditional "side hunt" in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds in one day.
   CBCs are social events, sporting occasions, and scientific studies. Each group takes a circle 15 miles in diameter and, on one day each year, counts every species and every individual bird that can be found within it. Data obtained is forwarded by a compiler to the National Audubon Society. Information about location and population of species is scientifically valuable and is not otherwise available.
   Hard-to-find birds
   The first count for me was the Corpus Christi Count, located on the Northwest Side. Several years ago this circle of birders counted the most species in the country. Compiler Kent Taylor assigned me to my favorite area, Hazel Bazemore Park. Counting the area with me was Frank Bachman, an experienced birder, friend and neighbor. We had a pleasant day with the best weather of the season, but each bird was hard to find. The great kiskadees - big-headed, yellow flycatchers - called all around. These tropical birds, once rare on our list, have become common. It is still a treat to see them dash around giving orders to lesser birders.
   An oven-bird, which came to a taped owl call, was a surprise so late in the year. The real prize for the day was Frank's sighting of a black-headed grossbeak. We researched it in Sibley's new field guide.
   The next day I did the Flour Bluff Count with Leonabelle Turnbull, the Bird Lady of Port Aransas' Birding Center, and Elsie Fisher, winter Texan from Anthony, Kan. Elsie is a retired Campfire Girls Director and this was her very first Christmas Bird Count, a thrill. Alas, our birds were slow . . . as Leonabelle said, she had "never worked so hard for each bird." We did have robins. These were a delight for us who only see robins occasionally in the winter, but for Elsie they were everyday birds. We joined other count-birders, mostly members of the Audubon Outdoor Club, at the count supper that evening. Though birders had seen many species, they told compiler Jim Hailey, they had mostly worked as hard as we had to find them.
   On to Port Aransas
   The next day, Monday, I again teamed with Turnbull and Fisher, and we were joined by Jimmy Swarz. The count was the Port Aransas Count, compilers of which are Scott and Joan Holt. Leonabelle, Jimmy and I have done this count many times together. We are familiar with the little roads of Aransas Pass that are our territory, but those little roads are harder and harder to access because of the highway that goes through them now, and the constantly-growing population.
   We started that day with a lovely pair of birds . . . one an eastern bluebird, the other an American robin . . . two with orange breasts. The entire morning and afternoon were spent playing the owl tape and making pishing sounds at clumps of underbrush. We finally found a hermit thrush, but it was late afternoon before we found Jimmy's beloved "little Santa Claus bird," his pet name for a white-throated sparrow.
   At Conn Brown Harbor, next to the beginning of the causeway, in Aransas Pass, it was a relief to count even laughing gulls, because they did not have to be coaxed from the bushes. By now Elsie was a seasoned counter. She proudly announced an American oystercatcher, which she spotted on an offshore reef in a crowd of double-crested cormorants.


Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

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