Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society

Christmas Bird Count

Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society, a partner of HSC, conducted a Christmas Bird Count annually since 1978. This page contains graphs and tables summarizing the results of the survey since 1978.

The count was done in accordance with the standards of the National Audubon Society and was published annually in American Birds magazine. Although the count area was revised somewhat during this period to include the Spearhead Center for Environmental Education, it was essentially done in a consistent manner for each of the reporting years. The area encompassed is a 15 mile diameter circle centered at the junction of Highway 71 and County Road 11. The count area is divided into five zones, each zone assigned to one or more groups of people who traverse the area by car and on foot to identify and record by species the number of birds observed. Additional observations are made by "feeder" watchers during the count day. Each group or party records the number of miles and the number of hours expended on the activity.

The files listed below require the Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have one it can be downloaded free by clicking here:

Click on the file of interest to view the report. Each report will open in a new window. For additional information contact John Mathisen at rmath@paulbunyan.net

Graph of raw data showing trends in number of species and total birds.

Table comparing count results since 1978.

Table listing total individuals for each species observed.

Graph showing population changes since 1978 based on birds/party-mile.

Graphs of population trends for selected species since 1978.

Table showing total species and total birds for each year.

Table showing species frequency.

Results of the most recent count.

Names of all participants since 1978.