The 53rd annual Stevensville Christmas Bird Count is scheduled for Saturday, December 30th. What a way to end the year! We hope you’ll be able to join us for a fun day (or morning) of meeting new folks and finding birds in our local winter wonderland. It’s a big area and we need all the help we can get. Experience is helpful, but certainly not required. Field observers will meet in the basement conference room of the Stevensville Ranger Station between 7:30 and 7:45 AM to form small teams and get area assignments. Birders who live in the Count Circle (anywhere within 7.5 miles of the Ranger Station) can opt to get up at their leisure and count the birds on their property. Both types of counters are critical to a successful count. You don’t have to spend all day counting birds, any time you have is helpful. 

Bird counters on last year’s Stevensville CBC found 12,266 birds of 80 different species, which was our lowest species count since 2010. We didn’t find any new species last year, so our cumulative species total remained at 158 over the 51 years of the Count. We’ve found some pretty wild birds in the past, including the 2000 sighting of what is still the only Vermillion Flycatcher ever reported in Montana, a Brambling in 2014 and a Northern Mockingbird in 1997. There are always some interesting birds out there just waiting to be discovered, so come and help us find all the common and unusual birds hiding in our winter landscape. Please contact me at 381-7679 for more information.