Rockingham County Circle

On December 16, 2023, the Rockingham Bird Club held its Christmas Bird Count (CBC). This was the 70th count held in Rockingham County and the 124^th year of counts nationwide. For a more general summary of Audubon’s CBC, see the article by Rob Beaton in the December 2023 HMN newsletter. This article recounts my participation this year. My wife and I were assigned the Union Springs sub-sector of area 6 of the count circle.

Aiming to start the count at sunrise, we drove to Ottobine Elementary School where we were greeted by 23° F temperature and wood stove smoke trapped by an atmospheric inversion layer. Our first fun bird sighting was a Cooper’s Hawk in a tree by the school playground. We had walked right past the tree, but then an Eastern Bluebird flew over and alerted us to the hawk’s presence with his chattering call. Thank you.

At our first stop along Waggys Creek Road, we found a Red-shouldered Hawk perched in a tree soaking up the early rays of sunshine warmth. I was jealous. Driving various roads between Briery Branch and Lilly, we would occasionally pull off to search for our avian friends. These spots would be where we felt favorable habitat existed, which sadly are getting harder to find. Although not exactly natural habitat, we would also stop near houses with bird feeders, which we knew about from past CBCs .

We saw many other birds enjoying the sun; from the 50 Cedar Waxwings high in various trees to the 74 Rock Pigeons perched on silo tops. We had a thermos of hot chocolate. By the time we finished our section, a bit after noon, we had recorded 35 species and a total count of 411 individual birds. This data will get compiled with numbers from the rest of the circle before being turned over to Audubon. If you would like to see the final tallies, check out the January or February Rockingham Bird Club newsletter, or the Audubon CBC website.

– Art Fovargue, Cohort VII, December 2023