The National Audubon Society is in the midst of its annual "Christmas Bird Count," which is mostly an unscientific "bird feeder" bird count done when those birds which are at greatest risk of decline (i.e. neo-tropical migrants including most grassland birds) are actually down south in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
In short, this is the wrong time of year to count birds that are truly at risk!
That said, the 111-years worth of data collected by the "Christmas Bird Count" does have some use, if for no other reason than to prove that one of the biggest fables about Bald Eagles and Osprey is more than a small lie.
What's the story? Simple: that Bald Eagles and Osprey were pushed to the edge of extinction by DDT.
Not quite true.
In fact, Bald Eagles and Osprey were pushed to the edge of extinction by bullets and leghold traps long before DDT showed up on the scene. See this previous post for more information about that.
This is NOT to say that the ban on DDT was not good for birds, only that the notion that Bald Eagles and Osprey were specifically driven off the map by DDT is simply not true, and obscures an important story about the value of the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
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