The National Weather Service has issued ominous predictions for the weather
tomorrow, Sunday December 16, in northwestern Ohio.  The forecast calls for
6 to 12 inches of snow, with winds on Sunday picking up to gusts of 40 mph
and possible blizzard conditions at times.  Matt Anderson has made the
difficult, but smart, decision to postpone the Toledo Christmas Bird Count
originally scheduled for Sunday (see http://www.rarebird.org for updates).
The Fremont count is also scheduled for Sunday, and organizers are
conferring now about whether to postpone that count, as that area would get
much of the same weather predicted for Toledo.  Obviously, anyone planning
to go on counts in n.w. Ohio or s.e. Michigan on Sunday should check to see
if they're going to run as scheduled.

For serious birders the instinct is always to go out and try to find birds
no matter how bad the weather is, but this macho approach doesn't work as
well for something that's supposed to be a census.  No one can find as many
birds in a blizzard as in calm weather, so the data gathered becomes
misleading, artificially lowering the totals and giving the appearance that
populations were down.  So aside from obvious factors of health and safety,
there are ornithological reasons for not running a count in terrible
conditions.  Tough birders who go out in bad weather should focus on finding
rarities, not on trying to make careful counts -- in other words, if you
abandon your senses, you should abandon your census too.

Kenn Kaufman
Rocky Ridge, Ohio

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