As a Mid-Winter Count compiler myself, I do it because I recognize that
if all counties did Mid-Winter Counts, we'd have a better picture of where
the birds are spending the winter and how many. Unfortunately, we aren't
currently compiling the Counts state-wide or nationwide at present as far
as I know, so the compiled count data is residing with various compilers
until someone takes on the task of collecting and regionally or nationally
archiving and compiling the information.
The Christmas Bird Counts have been collected and compiled since about
year 1900, and form a strong comparative database, while the Mid-Winter
counts are much more recent and not as extensively done, but the
Christmas Counts are done at a time when some late migrants are actually
still passing through; the mid-winter counts catch mostly birds which are
truly spending the winter, not just passing through. If the mid-winter counts
get done more extensively and for a longer stretch of years, they may actually
become more scientifically useful than the Christmas Counts. But for now,
they're sorta on hold until an effort is made to organize and archive the data.
I foresee a time when May Counts, summer breeding bird counts, Fall Counts,
and Winter Counts will be actually useful in monitoring bird populations and
migrations, and the Christmas Counts will be a bit of an oddity, occuring as
they do at the tail end of fall migration. But with the antiquity of the earliest data
collected, the Christmas Counts will remain as an historical database of bird
populations reaching further back than any of the others.
Hope this helps - ?
PW


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