Over 20,000 individual birds were tallied Sunday as part of the annual Christmas Bird Count.
Birders fanned out across the Island in 13 groups to count as many avian species as they could identify throughout the day. The count began before sunrise.
Car headlights cut through the fog as Robert Culbert, Dana Bangs and John Clark gathered to plan for the day. The trio was tasked with surveying the area between Tisbury Great Pond and Oyster Pond, south of Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.
Mr. Culbert, the Vineyard Gazette’s bird columnist who has been birding for 60 years, led the group.
The fog was too thick to see much at Long Point Wildlife Refuge, so the group drove to a wooded area by the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club. As Mr. Clark got out of his car, he stopped to listen to a caw coming from the woods.
“I just heard a crow, so there’s our first bird,” he said.
Mr. Clark is a seasonal resident of Oak Bluffs and had returned to the Island this weekend for the bird count.
The three men studied the trees as they walked, stopping to look for northern cardinals after hearing some telltale chirps, and Carolina wrens whose song rang through the air.
In the clearing behind the garden club, the group heard the call of a white-throated sparrow, but could not get a visual due to the fog. The sound was coming in quick succession from three different locations in the trees, so Mr. Culbert knew there were at least three birds, although the number may have been higher.
“White throated sparrows are not by themselves, they’re in a flock,” he said. “We have evidence of three so we’ll put down three.”
This year marked the 65th Christmas Bird Count on the Island, although the community science project has been a tradition with the National Audubon Society since 1900. The count, which began as an alternative to the tradition of a Christmas bird hunt, collects data used by researchers throughout the year. The information has been used by a variety of organizations in addition to the National Audubon Society, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
“This is the best part of the holidays as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Culbert said.
He and Mr. Clark brought their scopes with them as the trio walked down to Town Cove. Mr. Bangs waved across the water to another group of birders, the team surveying the area between Lucy Vincent Beach and Tisbury Great Pond.
After Mr. Culbert confirmed his site’s count, the group climbed into Mr. Clark’s car and drove to the next location. Overall, the group visited 18 different locations. More songbirds were spotted later in the day after the fog began to clear.
The weather impacted birders across the Island. Ben Clock and Barrie Greenfeld, two members of the team surveying Aquinnah, said that it was too foggy to bird on the cliffs until later in the day. This meant they missed the morning flight of seabirds, which may have impacted their final numbers.
David Smalls said his Oak Bluffs group also had a slow start because of the dreary day.
To find birds, Mr. Culbert and his team would imitate distress calls and listen for a response. Mr. Culbert played the sound of a screech owl being mobbed by a group of chickadees, although he was reticent to do so. A group of black-capped chickadees, 20 in total, flocked to see what was going on in the bushes alongside Coffins Field Road.
As the day came to a close, the teams met up at the Wakeman Center to eat dinner and discuss their sightings during the day. Luanne Johnson of BiodiversityWorks compiled all the data submitted by team leaders and read it aloud to the assembled birders, pausing for comment and discussion. For example, both Chappaquiddick teams saw two blue-winged teals and determined it was the same pair. Ms. Johnson adjusted the numbers and continued down the list.
After a final review by the team leaders, Ms. Johnson will add feeder data — birds seen in people’s backyard — and send the results to the National Audubon Society.
Overall, participants in the Christmas Bird Count observed 127 species thus far and counted 20,518 individual birds.
Mr. Bangs declared the Christmas Bird Count success
“Every day birding is one in the win column for me,” he said.
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