Blackford Christmas Bird Count

History

The Blackford Christmas Bird Count located in Russell County is one of over 2000 individual counts across the western hemisphere as part of the longest running wintertime bird watching tradition held by the Audubon Society. 

The Christmas Bird Count began over a century ago when 27 conservationists in 25 localities, led by scientist and writer Frank Chapman, changed the course of ornithological history.  On Christmas Day in 1900, the small group posed an alternative to the “side hunt”, a Christmas day activity in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small mammals.  Instead, Chapman proposed that they identify, count, and record all the birds they saw, founding what is now considered to be the world’s most significant citizen-based conservation effort and a more than century old institution.

A count is set up by selecting a count circle with a designated center and the birds are counted within a fifteen mile radius of the circle.  The Blackford Count’s center is the confluence of the Little and Clinch rivers.  Every species and individual bird is counted within the circle.  The Blackford Christmas Bird Count was first conducted on December 30, 1996, when a group of bird watchers from the Lebanon area got together and counted the birds within the circle.  Robert D. Riggs had been recording the winter residents in Russell County since 1994 and realized the counts in the Bristol, Tazewell, and Wise areas were missing some very good habitats containing interesting species such as the Golden Eagle.  Bob got together with Scott Whitcomb who was the resident biologist at the Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management area and the two studied a topographic map to see which circle center would contain Beartown Mountain, Laurel Bed Lake, Elk Garden, and Clifton.  The confluence of the Little and Clinch rivers located at 37 degrees 0' N by 81 degrees 55' W provided a good land mark for the count center, and the circle included the above mentioned locations.  Bob named the count the Blackford Count because of the proximity of the count’s center to Blackford.

The next step was to recruit some local bird watchers to help with the count.  Tom and Laverne Hunter volunteered to count the Clifton area and have been participants on each of the 12 Blackford Christmas Bird Counts conducted.  Joey Harrison who lived in Lebanon helped Bob and Scott count as much of the count circle as they could cover during the 24 hour period.  These five individuals counted 50 species of birds and 1426 individuals during the first count.  After the first count Joey has moved out west to work in the timber industry and Scott has moved to Michigan to continue his work in wildlife biology.  Dave Worley contributed to the count by letting us know what birds he saw at his feeders that day.  The creation of the Blackford Christmas Bird count has contributed significantly to the winter resident list of the state of Virginia particularly with the species of the Golden Eagles.  No one realized up to that time how high the wintering population was until the count was conducted.

Contributed by the founder of the count, Mr. Robert D. Riggs

Coming soon:  CBC Data