Fall Count

Thirty First Annual Fall Count – The Howard County Bird Club’s annual Fall Count, scheduled each year on the third Saturday of September, will be on September 21^st, 2024.  Mike McClure 410‑531‑2780 / McCluMD2@hotmail.com and Chuck Stirrat 410‑531‑2417 / stirrcr1@gmail.com are the county co-coordinators.  Holding the count in the presence of the novel coronavirus pandemic cause a few minor changes in how the count will proceed:

While the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 may or may not be remote, participation is at one’s own risk and neither MOS, nor its chapters, can guarantee that attendance will not result in contracting this virus.  The use of a high quality N95 mask is an excellent addition to your vaccination status to keep you ‘Covid free’ and should be practiced when with those that are not parts of your normal sphere of exposure (immediate family, etc.).  Note, prudence suggests that limited interaction is warranted.

1. Most count parties will be of minimum size, preferably one or two persons. If you choose to bird with a larger group or someone outside your sphere of exposure (immediate family, etc.) please employ social distancing, wear masks, hand sanitizer, etc. Please be careful.
2. Parties, including feeder counters, will email electronic inputs to coordinators (completed interactive tally sheets, scans or photos of manually completed field sheets; phone in results to coordinator).
3. If there is a tally rally, it will be preceded by a one hour in-person potluck starting at 6 p.m. Unless you are still in the field, please try to submit your checklist to your Area Coordinator by the start of the tally rally at 7:00 p.m. If you can’t attend in person a Zoom session will commence at 6:45 pm allowing you to join in the tally. To participate in the Tally Rally by Zoom, request the Zoom link.

Area Coordinators:

• Area 1: Mark Wallace & Wes Earp
• Area 2: Russ Kovach
• Area 3: Gregg Peterson
• Area 4: Mike McClure
• Area 5: Kurt Schwarz
• Area 6: Tom Seivert
• Area 7: Meghaan Lane

Email an area coordinator or county Coordinator to volunteer and be assigned a sub-area!

Interactive Tally Sheet:

Download Tally Sheet in PDF format

• Open the Tally Sheet (Adobe Reader works best but browsers should open it in interactive mode) and fill it out right on your computer or laptop.
• Move forward and back between active fields using Tab and Shift-Tab or mouse (not arrows or Enter key).
• When finished, save the form to your desktop/laptop, using your name  and sub-area as the file name.
• If you were assigned multiple sub-areas (which may include multiple eBird hotspots) use a separate form for each subarea and save each as a separate file.
• Attach the completed file(s) to an email to your Area Coordinator.
• Alternately, you can print the empty checklist and complete it manually and then send photos of the from and back to the Area Coordinator.