An Eastern Screech-Owl peeks out of a Wood Duck box where it was roosting during the Madison-area Christmas Bird Count (photo by Gail Smith).
As I write this, the snow is falling in the most delightful way. The chickadees are flitting about as if to encourage and confirm that winter birding is fun and productive! Little do they know, a community of hundreds of volunteers combed the city on Saturday, counting them and their feathered comrades for the Madison-area Christmas Bird Count.
Each December 14 through January 5, birders in North America and beyond come together for the longest-running citizen science project in North America: the Christmas Bird Count, which started in 1900. The national effort is run by National Audubon Society, but there are thousands of counts done throughout the country, each coordinated by local birders, many of whom are volunteers.
The Madison-area CBC was held on December 14, 2024.
Madison-area CBC circle map.
The Madison-area CBC includes Madison and many of its suburbs, including Fitchburg, McFarland, Monona, and Middleton. There is a lot of great habitat within the circle, thanks to the abundance lakes, rivers, wetlands, natural areas, city and county parks, and the many backyards hosting bird feeders. Volunteers are assigned areas, and they fan out in search of birds, trying to cover as much area as possible without double-counting birds.
The Madison-area count consistently has one of the highest number of participants in all of the CBC areas. For example, in 2023, we worked with 228 volunteers and ranked #15 for most volunteers out of 2,677 counts completed throughout Canada, United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Pacific Islands. Similarly, in 2022, the Madison-area count ranked #14 out of 2,625 counts with 222 volunteers. That is testimony to the marvelous community of bird lovers in this area! This year, we were fortunate to have help from 256 people on December 14, our highest number yet.
A group of birders watch a Barred Owl hunt along a path (photo by Jeff Galligan).
A young birder looks through a monocular near the Lakeshore Nature Preserve (photo by Carolyn Byers).
Four birders survey areas south of Madison for the Christmas Bird Count (photo by Michael Kamp).
BIPOC Birding Club members bird in Elver Park (photo by Dexter Patterson).
Most of our volunteers are in the field throughout the Madison area looking for and counting birds. We also have a lot of feeder-watcher volunteers who spend time documenting the birds that visit their feeders. And this year, we held an accessible Indoor Sit and Birdwatching Event at Olbrich Botanical Gardens where a group of 35 or so people—most of them new to Christmas Bird Counts—were able to participate in the event by watching the birds outside the windows and in the gardens. It was a great way to share the experience with new CBC volunteers, and contribute data to the day’s effort.
A group of people watch for birds from inside the building at Olbrich Botanical Gardens as part of the Madison-area Christmas Bird Count (photo by Brenna Marsicek/SoWBA).
Each area within the Madison circle pools their groups’ data into one data sheet, and submits it to the main compiler (me!). Then I combine all of the areas’ data sheets into one complete data set. And it’s a lot of data. This year, these 256 birders counted 49,923 birds of 97 species!
Then, that data set is combined with all of the Christmas Bird Counts done in North America and beyond for this year. And then THOSE data sets are combined with ALL datasets for the 125 year history of the Christmas Bird Count. These long-term and broad-scale data sets can provide powerful information for scientists asking a variety of questions.
Two Sandhill Cranes forage on Madison’s east side (photo by Mark Martin).
Belted Kingfishers were spotted by many, this one in Middleton (photo by Edgar Spalding).
Four Merlins were tallied on December 14, this one also in Middleton (photo by Edgar Spalding).
An Eastern Screech-Owl snoozes in the morning light (photo by Neil Dieffenbaugh).
A huge thank you goes out to our 23+ area captains who coordinated volunteers in their parts of town, submitted their data, and made this day a success. Another big thank you goes to the other 233 or so volunteers who spent a day cheerfully looking for birds in the cold. You’re awesome!
Written by Brenna Marsicek, director of outreach and Madison-area Christmas Bird Count compiler
2024 Madison-area Christmas Bird Count results
Species tallied: 97 + 3 count week species
Record count: 98 species in 2022
Number of individual birds: 49,923 birds
Number of field volunteers: 256
Number of feeder watchers: 31
Number of volunteer hours spent counting birds in that 1 single day: 320
Weather: high of 37 degrees, cloudy, no snow cover, lakes partially frozen, winds 20 mph, no precipitation during most of the event (rain began at 4pm).
If we don’t document a species on the count date, but birders find it 3 days before or after the date, we call it a “Count Week” bird—or CW. Those species don’t count toward our species total, but they do help us get a slightly better picture of species’ presence and absence during the winter.
Snow Goose: 5
Cackling Goose: 30
Canada Goose: 17,296
Trumpeter Swan: 54
Tundra Swan: 1,213
Duck spp.: 9
Wood Duck: 2
Gadwall: 84
American Widgeon: 5
American Black Duck: 12
Mallard: 3,577
Northern Shoveler: 415
Green-winged Teal: 2
Canvasback: 109
Redhead: 25
Ring-necked Duck: 11
Greater Scaup: 8
Lesser Scaup: 32
White-winged Scoter: CW
Long-tailed Duck: 2
Bufflehead: 310
Common Goldeneye: 2,546
Hooded Merganser: 13
Common Merganser: 1,442
Red-breasted Merganser: 33
Ruddy Duck: 27
Wild Turkey: 547
Common Loon: 3
Red-throated Loon: CW (rare! has only been seen on the CBC day twice!)
Double-crested Cormorant: 1 (rare! only the 3rd time seen on the Madison CBC)
Great Blue Heron: 5
Northern Harrier: 3
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 8
Cooper’s Hawk: 34
Bald Eagle: 70
Red-tailed Hawk: 102
Rough-legged Hawk: 1
American Coot: 520
Sandhill Crane: 579
Gull spp.: 31
Ring-billed Gull: 1,170
Herring Gull: 2,978
Great Black-backed Gull: 4
Iceland Gull: 3 (rare! only the 8th time seen on the Madison CBC)
Lesser Black-backed Gull: 4
Rock Pidgeon: 282
Mourning Dove: 818
Eastern Screech-Owl: 4
Great Horned Owl: 8
Snowy Owl: 1
Barred Owl: 6
Belted Kingfisher: 9
Red-headed Woodpecker: 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker: 330
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker: 9
Downy Woodpecker: 362
Hairy Woodpecker: 153
Northern Flicker: 29
Pileated Woodpecker: 5
American Kestrel: 5
Merlin: 3
Peregrine Falcon: 1 (rare! only the 6th time seen on the Madison CBC)
Eastern Phoebe: 1 (rare! only the 4th time seen on the Madison CBC)
Northern Shrike: 1
Blue Jay: 340
American Crow: 563
Black-capped Chickadee: 1,068
Tufted Titmouse: 42
Red-breasted Nuthatch: 12
White-breasted Nuthatch: 351
Brown Creeper: 50
Winter Wren: 12
Carolina Wren: 2
Golden-crowned Kinglet: 40
Ruby-crowned Kinglet: 1
Eastern Bluebird: 13
Hermit Thrush: 4
American Robin: 1,578
Brown Thrasher: 1
European Starling: 3,745
Cedar Waxwing: 199
Snow Bunting: 30
Bay-breasted Warbler: CW
American Tree Sparrow: 654
Chipping Sparrow: 1 (rare! only the 6th time seen on the Madison CBC)
Fox Sparrow: 7
Dark-eyed Junco: 1,289
White-crowned Sparrow: 19
White-throated Sparrow: 48
Savannah Sparrow: 1
Song Sparrow: 13
Swamp Sparrow: 4
Northern Cardinal: 653
Red-winged Blackbird: 8
Rusty Blackbird: 1
Common Grackle: 5
House Finch: 672
Purple Finch: 3
White-winged Crossbill: 1
Pine Siskin: 4
American Goldfinch: 747
House Sparrow: 2,389
