Before the turn of the 20th century, when conservation was in its infancy, groups of hunters would put on a Christmas “side hunt,” where teams would compete to shoot down the most feathered and furred denizens of the land. But in 1900, the then-budding Audubon Society started a new tradition: the Christmas Bird Count, where citizen scientists would take tallies of America’s birds without shooting them out of the sky.
That first count had 27 participating birders in 25 locations. Over a century later, the Christmas Bird Count sees people across the United States and Canada tally up birds in hundreds of cities, with multiple census locations in each one.
In Missoula, local birdwatchers hit the trails at various locations around the city on Dec. 14. Five Valleys Audubon and the local chapter of the Feminist Birding Club gathered a crew to survey the Maclay Flats Nature Trail, which is apparently a good place to spot owls.
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The woods were replete with birds, especially by the river. Two flocks of honking geese soared overhead. Crows and pigeons fluttered between trees on the opposite bank. The birders debated the species of a woodpecker perched high up — hairy or downy? Downies are smaller with shorter beaks, but such relative terms are hard to determine without seeing specimens side by side. The group decided it was a hairy woodpecker, aided by Merlin, an app that helps with bird identification…