The thousands of crows that used to congregate near the Lackawanna River in downtown Scranton at dusk haven't been around this year, missing the big bird census that began this weekend.
Bird lovers throughout the region fanned out to take part in massive Christmas Bird Census led locally by members of the Lackawanna County Audubon Society.
They took advantage of the crisp, partly sunny day to tally avian friends. Counters saw some hooded merganser, a type of duck. They also spotted a peregrine falcon perched on the SNB Building on Lackawanna Avenue.
"We've seen 10,000 crows at a time, but not this year," said Paul Mundy, count coordinator for the Lackawanna Audubon Society. "But we saw more types of birds."
The group will get together and combine numbers and report them to the national clearinghouse for the information. The count is overseen by the Audubon Society and includes North and South America, involving thousands of groups and tens of thousands of individuals who identify and tally birds they see in their region. The count continues through Jan. 5.
The count is as old as the Audubon organization, begun in 1900 by an Audubon founder Frank M. Chapman. Concerned that so many birds were being hunted, he proposed counting them instead. Such a widespread survey had scientific value. Today, the work of the citizen survey is used by biologists and ecologists looking for clues to changes in bird behavior.
Today, the Florence Shelly Wetlands Preserves stewardship committee will gather at 2 p.m. at the preserves to count birds wintering there.
Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com