Bird count has replaced side hunt as holiday tradition

Neely's Landing, 7 a.m., a week after Christmas. Walking along the edge of the town cemetery overlooking the Mississippi River, Bill Eddleman whistles to the nearby woods. A descending trill of repeating notes. As if he's expecting an answer.

On cue, Bill gets a "pish, pish, pish" from a rustle in the undergrowth. It's a sparrow scolding Bill for impersonating an owl.

"Cemeteries are hot spots for birds because for the most part they haven't been disturbed much over the years. They have good edge," Eddleman says.

Edge is the area between the woods and the cemetery grass.

Eddleman knows about edge and other kinds of bird habitat because he's professor and chair of the biology department at Southeast Missouri State University, where he teaches ornithology and wildlife-related classes.

He's also connected to this particular place by more than an interest in birds.

"My great-great-great-grandfather came from England," Eddleman says. "He lived about eight or 10 miles down the road in Pocahontas. He's buried in this cemetery."

Before the day is out, Bill will walk around three other old town cemeteries, whistle and chirp out the window of his parked car countless times along the riverside blacktop and check farm fields, stream beds and other locations he's come to know over the years as places where birds congregate.

Bill's been doing this for 30 years. This year, he's one of an estimated 50,000 other birders who volunteer for the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. Clipboards in hand, these folks tally birds across North America from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5.

The Christmas Bird Count was started in 1900 by the Audubon Society. The count originated as a protest against a practice called the Christmas side hunt. It was a "side" hunt because folks would get in groups and take sides to see which group could shoot the widest variety of wildlife at Christmastime.

"Pretty much people would go out and shoot anything that moved on Christmas during the side hunt," Eddleman says.

Fortunately, that practice stopped with the signing of the Lacey Act in 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty in 1918.

The threat to birds now is taking habitat. Eddleman says that since the 1960s, habitat loss has been accelerating. A recent report from the Biodiversity Project -- a Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization -- calculates that we lose a million acres of open space, including farms, parks and natural areas, each year in this country.

Recent studies by the World Conservation Union and the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology predict that in the next 100 years, at least 10 percent of all bird species will become extinct. According to the researchers, the rate could climb as high as 25 percent.

Want to help our feathered friends?

* Get involved in bird organizations like the Audubon Society or the American Bird Conservancy (abcbirds.org).

* Hang out some bird feeders. They can mean the difference between life and death when it gets really cold.

* Keep your cat indoors. The American Bird Conservancy estimates cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year in North America.

* Plant native grasses and shrubs.

* Make brush piles.

Check grownative.org or conservation.state.mo.us for other ways to assist the amazing variety of birds that live or visit here.

Phil Helfrich is a community outreach specialist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.