Jeff and Allison Wells Wed, 12/23/2020 - 8:15am For the authors, a highlight of the 121st annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count was close observations of pine grosbeaks, an unusual winter visitor from Canadian Boreal Forest. Courtesy of Jeff Wells The day started with the temperature in the single digits. It was the day of the 121 st annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The CBCs take place in the period spanning from mid-December through early January. The count was started as a sort of protest to a practice known as the Christmas hunt, when hunters would go out around the holidays and see how many birds (and presumably other creatures as well) they could shoot. Frank Chapman--a prominent ornithologist, conservationist, and writer/editor who published an early wildlife conservation magazine—invited his readers in 1900 to begin a tradition of counting rather than hunting birds around the holiday season. Twenty-seven people participated in 25 counts that first year.