On a recent balmy morning, members of the Greater Akron Audubon Society gathered at Brust Park in Munroe Falls. Armed with binoculars, the group had a mission: the summer bird census.
Every June since 1978, chapter members have spread across Summit County for 10 days to count all the birds they see and hear. This year’s summer bird census was June 6-15.
The goal of the breeding bird census is to track trends in the types and numbers of species.
“[We’re] trying to get a real-world in-the-moment snapshot of which birds are here, because if they’re here right now, it means they’re breeding,” said Becca Zak, the group’s president.
Joined by board member Leigh Forman and her husband, Ted Forsberg, and vice president Paul Moser and his son, Hunter Moser, and grandson Jayden Nottingham (an honorary chapter member), Zak and the others slowly made their way along the Bike & Hike Trail.
It was Forman’s first year helping with the summer bird census. She’s been birding off and on for 30 years but still considers herself a beginner. Wearing a pair of dangly bluebird earrings, Forman listed the countries she’s been birding in: Madagascar, Ecuador, Galapagos, Costa Rica.
“Birds are like jewels,” she said. “It’s like finding something that’s in plain sight, but you have to work for it a little bit.”
As they continued down the trail, the group members called out the birds they saw and heard. Zak tracked them through an app on her phone.
“Two grackles,” Paul Moser said. “Two American robins.”
“Catbird!” Zak said, pointing to a small gray bird known for its feline-like mewing sound.
“We have another waxwing way up on top of the tree, if you look through the window,” Paul Moser said, referring to a space between tree branches where the bird was visible.
He can trace his birding back to age 5. His parents put feeders outside and gave him a Peterson bird guide and binoculars. Before coming to Brust Park, he was in Richfield at 4:30 a.m. Someone told him there would be woodcocks there.
“Not one. I was there for an hour and a half,” he said, laughing. “My day off, I’m up at 4:15 to go out. But I got the usual suspects, like bobolinks and Henslow’s sparrows.”
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The county is separated into 30 territories, each with a leader from the Greater Akron Audubon Society. Within the territories are smaller areas — like Brust Park — that members visit to do their counting. Zak said members visit the same areas every year for consistency. This year, she was in charge of territories 12 and 17, which cover Stow, Munroe Falls and part of Tallmadge.
The data from the summer bird census is reviewed by two employees who work for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Paul Moser said. It’s also posted on the Greater Akron Audubon Society’s website and housed at the downtown branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library, he added.
Zak likened the bird census to the phrase “a canary in a coal mine”: both act as alerts.
“Instead of bringing a bird down into a mine with us and saying, ‘Oh, it is acting weird, we should leave the mine,’ they’re telling us if something changed, positive or negative,” Zak said of the population count.
She continued, “I don’t know how many yellow warblers I had in this area last year, but if we’re down significantly, what’s going on? What’s different? … And that’s not for us to decide, but that’s for people who see the data and then [make] policy decisions and stuff like that. But without data, you can’t do anything.”
For the Greater Akron Audubon Society, the summer bird census is a small way for members to contribute to a larger project. They’re citizen scientists, yes, but, above all, they’re people who love birds and want to see them thrive.
“I come out here because I know that I’m at least doing something,” Zak said. “Can’t change the world. Might as well go bird.”
