25 Days of Christmas: Christmas Bird Count is a Coast tradition

The snowbirds are flocking to South Mississippi -- those in campers and the actual winged varieties that migrate to the Coast each year in time for Audubon's annual Christmas Bird Count.

For 116 years, Audubon has held what it calls "the longest-running wildlife census." Similar counts are happening throughout the Western Hemisphere to help Audubon keep track of the health of the environment.

South Mississippi is home or host to 200 bird species, many of which come and go with the seasons in an amazing parade.

For more than 30 years, groups of bird enthusiasts from Hancock and Jackson counties have gone out around Christmas to identify and count the birds they see in specific areas.

"This is the amateur bird community, largely led by the Mississippi Coast Audubon Society," said Mark LaSalle, director of the Pascagoula River Audubon Center.

Hancock County's CBC was Tuesday; Jackson County's will be Jan. 4.

"It was a fabulous day to be out birding," said Kim Anderson of Tuesday's CBC, an editor at the Sun Herald who has joined the Christmas Bird Count for more than 10 years. She was the only person in the group to spot white pelicans -- 16 of them, near her house. She also counted a golden-crowned kinglet and a bald eagle.

"It's birding with a purpose," she said of the bird count. "It is a function of being a citizen scientist and looking out for the good of the wildlife in South Mississippi, which has such natural beauty that it just amazes me every time I think about it."

Though LaSalle's group sought in vain for the white pelicans, he said they did see flocks of 500 to 600 tree swallows that flew down and took turns drinking in a lake.

"They breed in the northern United States and southern Canada and then they winter with us," he said. They sometimes fly in "a tornado of tree swallows."

Residents and visitors in South Mississippi routinely look for robins, cardinals and goldfinches this time of year and LaSalle said they should watch for cedar waxwings, which he calls "the Geisha Girls of the bird world." Their tails are tipped with a bright-yellow fringe and their wingtips with what looks like drops of red wax. Other winter visitors are robins, blackbirds and many varieties of hawks.

"We encourage people to feed birds in winter," LaSalle said. "It's cold outside."

For those who want to learn more about the birds of South Mississippi, a gift Audubon membership makes a fun stocking stuffer.

Today, expert birder Don McKee will speak at 10 a.m. about his "Big Year," a birder's quest to see as many different bird species as possible between 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1 and 11:59 p.m. Dec. 31. Sharon Milligan will be at the Audubon Center at 5107 Arthur St., Moss Point, south of Interstate 10, exit 68, from 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. selling prints of her photographs of South Mississippi's natural wonders.

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 8:14 PM with the headline "25 Days of Christmas: Christmas Bird Count is a Coast tradition ."