Keeping track of the birds is a Christmas tradition

SALT LAKE CITY — It's always extra busy this time of year for Keeli Marvel. Not only are there all the usual holiday traditions the rest of us celebrate, there's also the one where she walks the sidewalks, the fields, the streams and the canyons making sure her feathered friends are accounted for.

Marvel is a birdwatcher, aka a birder — a person who enjoys observing birds in all their varieties.

And while she indulges in her hobby year round, at Christmastime the activity takes on added gravitas as she participates in an annual event with the ambitious goal of keeping track of all the birds in the Western Hemisphere.

It's called the Christmas Bird Count, and it's been going on longer than any of us have been alive.

A man named Frank M. Chapman started the Christmas Bird Count 125 years ago, when, on Christmas Day, 1900, he was joined by 26 fellow bird lovers at a handful of locations, mostly in the eastern U.S. and Canada, who collectively counted some 18,500 birds and 90 species.

The event's initial purpose was to counteract a holiday activity that was popular around the turn of the 19th century. It was called the Christmas Side Hunt and involved a competition among hunters to see who could shoot the most birds. So — the dead opposite of the Christmas Bird Count.

History attests who won; 125 years later, the Side Hunt is not only no longer held, it would be illegal just about everywhere. The Christmas Bird Count, on the other hand, has grown to include some 80,000 yearly participants at nearly 25,000 locations in Canada, the U.S., South America and the Caribbean.

That includes 30 locations in the state of Utah, all of them staffed by people like Marvel — true volunteers who work for nothing more, or less, than the joy of communing with some of God's most beautiful and intriguing creations.

Marvel helped organize counts in two of the Utah CBC locations this year. The first in Provo on Dec. 14 and the second in Payson this past weekend (Christmas Bird Counts are required to take place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5).

Although Marvel, 42, a graduate of Pleasant Grove High School, spent a lot of time hiking, camping and skiing when she was growing up, she had no inkling of the important role birds would play in her future "until I took an ornithology class at BYU and got hooked."

Part of her grade in the class was based on identifying 200 species of birds (there are approximately 11,000 species worldwide).

Try as she might, tramping through the snow and cold throughout winter semester, the highest she could get by semester's end was 170 species.

She attributes that to the reason she got "only" a B-plus for the class.

She also attributes it to changing the direction of her life.

Marvel went on to get bachelor's and master's degrees in wildlife and wildland conservation and became a biologist for the Department of Defense, where birds are a big part of her job.

While at BYU, she also joined the Utah County Birders, a club consisting of "just a bunch of people who love bird watching" that she has been an integral part of ever since. In addition to the club's monthly outings, she also fits in the occasional bird-watching vacation. She's birded in the U.K. and Switzerland and this summer she has signed up for a birdwatching tour in Costa Rica.

A poster she made to recruit members to the Utah County club helps explain why she does it.

Under the heading, "Why Bird Watch?" she listed: "It's good for your health, it keeps your brain active, it gets you outside, it reduces your stress." Oh, and it's fun. And it's good for the birds.

Birdwatchers identify changes in bird habitat, reductions in populations, variations in migrating patterns and other bird behavior that helps conservation efforts.

The Christmas Bird Count formalizes such data, helping national organizations such as the American Bird Conservancy and local groups such as Tracy Aviary here in Salt Lake lobby for programs that will help improve bird living conditions and slow down the yearly loss of birds. (Each year, due to factors like the inexorable growth of civilization and climate changes, the Earth's bird population declines by the millions, although rest assured an estimated 50 billion birds still fly through the skies, about five birds to every one human).

In the Payson Christmas Bird Count, which concluded this past Saturday, Marvel and her cohorts counted 105 species of birds, "which knocks our previous high counts out of the water," she said, "91 was our previous best."

At the end of the count, which lasted all day, "We were tired, but satisfied, knowing we put in our best effort," says Marvel. "I know I definitely have a sense of pride knowing that my efforts and the count circle I help run provide an opportunity for local birders to unite in continuing this historic tradition. Long term data sets of this scale are vital to our understanding of bird population declines and informing conservation efforts."

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