2020 Christmas Bird Count Report

The 2020 Seattle Christmas Bird Count will always be ‘the one with the asterisk.’ As with so much else in 2020, the Covid pandemic called for a different approach. Rather than risk putting participants at risk, this year the Seattle CBC was limited entirely to observers watching feeders from their own yard. No outside walks through parks and neighborhoods, and no social potluck afterwards. Instead, we limited ourselves to the feeder-watch protocols that have become an important complement to the usual in-field CBC teams. (We did manage a ‘Zoom potluck’ for the species rollcall by Neil Zimmerman – some traditions must be maintained!)

As such, all numbers are of course much lower than our normal Seattle CBC numbers. Whereas last year we tallied 124 species and over 50,000 individual birds, this year our total was 52 species and 7219 individuals. Participation was remarkable for such a different style – we had 196 participants this year, 2/3 of the total from last year.

Thank you to everyone who participated – and especially to Matt Bartels, for compiling and writing this report.