It’s that special time of year again, full of magical anticipation, wondrous excitement, and pure-hearted thankfulness. We are, of course, talking about Christmas Bird Count season, otherwise known as the Birder’s Holiday.

Christmas Bird Counts are an official early winter bird survey overseen by the National Audubon Society that have been taking place for over a hundred years. Each Christmas Bird Count (or CBC, for short) is a tally of all the birds within a designated 15-mile-diameter circle on a single day. That day must fall between mid-December and early January. The National Audubon Society sets the exact first and last possible date of each year’s count period a year in advance, and the organizers of the count then decide which date their particular count will take place on. Each CBC count circle is subdivided into sections, and each section has a team that accepts the responsibility of trying to count all the birds in that section. Some counts have hundreds of participants who cover small sections of the count circle. Others have only a few, which means that each individual may have a large section of the count circle to cover.

This year, the CBC period runs from Dec. 14, 2025 to Jan. 5, 2026. There are more than thirty CBCs happening in Maine. A little over half have taken place as of the time we are writing this. This includes the Thomaston-Rockland CBC (took place on Dec. 14) Pemaquid/Damariscotta CBC (Dec. 20), the Bath/Phippsburg/Georgetown CBC (Dec. 20), and the count we participated in, the Augusta CBC (Dec. 20), which extends from Augusta south into Gardiner and Randolph.

We didn’t find any earth-shattering oddities, but really enjoyed the pleasure of looking and listening intently for birds throughout the day in our section of the Augusta CBC, which encompasses the municipality of Gardiner. There were good numbers of dark-eyed juncos and a few white-throated sparrows, but despite seeing several song sparrows regularly only days before, we could not find one on count day.

We saw downy and hairy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers on the count, but could not find the rather rare (this time of year) yellow-bellied sapsucker that we had seen twice in the week prior. Nor could we locate a pileated woodpecker. Yes, there had been at least one roaming around the neighborhood just a few days beforehand.

It is possible that the high winds and rain may have killed some birds or that they moved to different locations afterwards. Or it may be that this particular day, the species in question moved around the landscape in such a way that we didn’t cross paths. We’ll see in the coming days if any of the ones that we had seen before the count show up again or not.

The search for what we think should be there and the knowledge that we might find something unusual that we didn’t know was there are two of the reasons that birders love to do CBCs. But what makes the CBCs particularly special is that the data collected by the tens of thousands of participants in the thousands of CBCs that take place across North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the world, is used to monitor the populations trends of birds. The CBC trend analyses can tell us what species are declining or increasing, what species ranges are expanding or shrinking, and what species may be having a sudden spike in abundance as part of a multi-year cycle.

All of this makes any of us who participate in a CBC feel good about being a part of it, but the truth is, most people just do CBCs because they are loads of fun often spent with friends and family in the beautiful outdoors. There are still some CBCs yet to be held in Maine. If you want to join in, Maine Audubon has a great website that can get you in touch with the compilers of every Maine CBC at: https://maineaudubon.org/birding/christmas-bird-count/

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).