FIELD NOTES BLOG

2024 Kishwaukee Christmas Bird Count Recap

Rowan Mermel
March 8, 2025

Imagine waking up full of anticipation at 3:30 am, rushing to pack your bag with field guides and bundling up to face the bitter December cold. What would be worth the early, cold wake-up? The Christmas Bird Count! The Christmas Bird Count is the longest running community science project in the country. It is administered by the National Audubon Society. Between December 14th and January 5th, hundreds of individual day-long counts take place across the country. Each count takes place in a 15 mile diameter circle. There are three counts that take place in the Rockford area. Severson Dells Nature Center is in the Kishwaukee count area.


 The Kishwaukee Christmas Bird Count team put in an excellent effort last December, making 17,391 observations of 68 bird species. The counters got ahead early, starting at 3:30 am, to ensure that they could count owls that are active at night. At 7:00 am the real game began when the diurnal birds came out. The team drove a total of 343 miles and added another 54 miles on foot. Three rookie birders came through big this year, while the veteran birders built upon their past experience to ensure the count ran smoothly.

The most common bird this year was the Canadian goose. The most diverse location in the count area was Blackhawk Springs Forest Preserve with 39 species of birds. The largest percentage increase from last year was seen in the Hairy woodpecker, of which observations nearly doubled from last year.


Species seen this year were:


Canada Goose, Mallard, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Yellow Bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Dark Eyed Junco, Northern Cardinal, House Sparrow, Herring Gull, Mourning Dove, Pileated Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Fox Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Common Merganser, Wild Turkey, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Bald Eagle Adult, Bald Eagle Immature, Barred Owl, Belted King Fisher, Hairy Woodpecker, Merlin, Winter Wren, Carolina Wren, European Starling, Cedar Waxwing, American Tree Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark, American Goldfinch, Red-tailed Hawk, Great Horned Owl, House Finch, Rough-legged Hawk, Hermit Thrush, Song Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Northern Harrier, Red-winged Blackbird, Ring-billed Gull.


The Christmas Bird Count is unique because of its scale and flexibility, which results in challenges and opportunities in using the data. Because there is a lot of variety in effort between count areas and across years, comparing data between counts and drawing trends over time is not straightforward. Calculations must be done to adjust the number of observations for the amount of effort in a count area. Count areas also have to be averaged out into “Bird Conservation Regions” to remove statistical noise. The trends of bird populations in these bird conservation regions can be viewed at https://www.audubon.org/community-science/christmas-bird-count/where-have-all-birds-gone. To participate in this years Christmas Bird Count visit https://gis.audubon.org/christmasbirdcount/?_gl=1*90mxdm*_gcl_au*MTgzNjAyMjIzMy4xNzM4

RECENT ARTICLES

Summer Camp Reflections

September 3, 2025
As the summer camp season comes to a close, creek shoes are dried, crayons are put away, and our staff reflect on their summer of directing and supporting Severson Dells camp. This summer, they led and assisted with 9 weeks of summer camp programs that reached 211 campers! Out of the many adventures this season, here are some of their highlights and what they learned along the way.

Emma's Farewell

By Emma Zimmerman • August 26, 2025
When I started at Severson Dells nearly two years ago, I never would have believed I’d still be here today. What was supposed to be a short detour turned into one of the meaningful positions I have served. These years have flown by, and as I sit down to write this farewell, I keep circling back to my early days here. It feels important to revisit that beginning, because in so many ways, it shaped everything that followed.

Shannon's Farewell

By Shannon Osadjan • August 26, 2025
While my time at Severson Dells is coming to an end, my time and experience as a junior naturalist is just beginning. When I accepted this job position, I was a recent college graduate who was ready to get into the environmental work force but didn’t know where to start. Here I am, a year later, and I feel ready and excited to take on whatever comes my way. Last September, when I first started working here at Severson Dells, I didn’t know what to expect. I had never been an educator before and I was nervous about my skill-set, but I pleasantly surprised myself. I found myself enjoying teaching, and the goofy experiences and questions that came with it. When I started here, my biggest goal for myself was to become better informed about the ecology of Rockford, and being more aware and able to identify what’s growing around me. A year later, I am proud of myself and how much I have learned. Because of my schooling background being in geology, I already had a familiarity with looking at the outside world in a different lens. I know how to look at the geology and the basic layout of an area to understand the depositional environment, or what the land most likely looked like back in the day. However, being at Severson Dells for the past year has shown me how to appreciate nature and the outdoors in a new way, in a biological sense. I now know how to look at the ecology of an area and see how the plants are working together, and how this compliments what the birds and the bugs are doing, and how the trees play a role too, and this cycle keeps going. I knew forests were interconnected, but I feel like I truly get it now. It’s helped me to connect the pieces of nature that I wasn’t aware of before, and put them all together now to see a new, bigger picture. Severson Dells is a place I will always hold dearly to me. The experiences I had, the challenges I overcame while being here, and the personal growth I’ve been able to experience: all of this helps shape my love for this lovely forest preserve here in Northern Illinois. I want to be sure to express my appreciation for the staff here at Severson Dells Nature Center, and the kindness they always treat everyone with. The people here are always so willing to help me with learning new skills, diving into intimidating science topics, and trying to help foster that curiosity that everyone has inside of them. As I close this chapter, I feel inspired and grateful for the connections I’ve made, and ready for what the future has in store for me.