As Annie Lindsay drove her black Honda CR-V Saturday morning on a road splitting a Cook Township meadow, she had a premonition, earned by roughly two decades of studying birds.
“There should be hawks in here,” she said.
A few seconds later, the car was in park. Lindsay, 44, of Ligonier and her colleague at the Powdermill Avian Research Center, Joe Saxfield, 41, of Indiana each pulled out a pair of binoculars to inspect a dark outline perched on a sycamore tree.
She pulled the car around a bend for another angle. The second look confirmed her hunch: It was a red-shouldered hawk, a handsome raptor with broad wings and a shrill scream.
“That’s a good one to start on,” she said.
By the end of the day, about a dozen professional and hobbyist birders led by Lindsay will have catalogued hundreds of avian sightings across a 15-mile diameter, with the Powdermill facility at the center.
The group was set to gather over dinner Saturday to share their findings. On a typical year, the survey turns up reports of 60 to 85 individual species.
They’re playing their small part in the National Audubon Society’s 126th annual Christmas Bird Count, when bird lovers throughout the U.S., Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands conduct one-day surveys through Dec. 14 and Jan. 5.
Counts are also being held Saturday at Todd Nature Reserve and Buffalo Creek Nature Park in Buffalo Township and Dec. 27 at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel.
The results are compiled by the Audubon Society and used to monitor population trends, guide conservation efforts and provide a robust dataset for researchers to draw on.
Anyone can participate — though passion was a prerequisite to brave the early morning cold. Temperatures only crept into the 30s by the time the count was well underway.
But for those who can handle the weather, the Christmas bird count is a great entry point to the hobby (that for some, becomes a livelihood).
Anyone is welcome to participate in the event. First-time surveyors are paired with experienced participants to ensure the integrity of the count.
The day comes with a chance to encounter the unexpected. Lindsay and Saxfield were up and at it shortly after 5 a.m. in hopes of seeing owls. They spotted six, including an Eastern Screech owl with red feathers, which is less common than the gray variation.
“I think that’s the whole point of this, getting excited about seeing things,” Saxfield said.
Birding, as a whole, can be “addictive,” in the words of Natalie Donofrio, 27, of Greensburg, who works at Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory near Chestertown, Md.
But would-be birders be warned: Once you learn to discern the sights and sounds of the flying specks around you, ignorance is not an option.
Take it from Donofrio’s coworker, Gabe Urso, 26, of Maryland.
“You can never turn it off,” he said.
