How many birds in the whole wide world?
Some time ago I got a question from a six year old about birds. It’s the kind of question that many people might wonder about, but only a six year old would ask it. “How many birds are there in the whole wide world?”, Harry, who lives in Somerville, MA, asked. I took a crack at it and this is the result (full disclosure: Harry shares a lot of my DNA).
Dear Harry, You have asked a hard question and I will give it a try, but it is a LONG answer. The hardest question is the biggest—how many birds in the whole world? We are not even sure how many different kinds of birds there are in the world. The answer to that is about 10 thousand. Several of these kinds, or species, number over 3 billion in the world. Probably the most common, if you don’t count chickens that we raise for eggs and food, is the House Sparrow.
There are lots of kinds of birds that are very common, including some sea birds that spend their whole lives flying around the ocean except when they are having babies on some tiny island. That makes them very hard to count correctly. All together the total number of wild birds in the world is somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion! The fact that there is such a big difference in those numbers shows how hard it is to count them all.
Even though there are a lot of birds in the world, you should know that there are some birds that are very rare. Scientists call them endangered, which means that if we are not kind and helpful to them they might disappear. For example one bird that lives in the forests of Brazil in South America, the Stresemann’s Bristlefront, has gotten so endangered that there are only 15 of them in the whole world!
The estimate for the total number of birds in the United States is around 10 billion in the spring but more like 15 billion in the fall after the babies have hatched.
Right here in Boston I can give you the EXACT number of birds that were present (or at least seen) in Boston on Sunday December 16, 2012. That was the day that a whole bunch of birders spent all day going around places like Jamaica Plain and Somerville counting every pigeon, every sparrow, every goose and every cardinal and writing it down. Here is a funny little fact about the Boston Christmas Bird Count (BCBC)—which has been going for more than one hundred years—the very center of that circle is the Healy School playground in Somerville! So some day you can go with your parents and stand in the very center of the BCBC counting circle for birds and see how many birds you can see, That game is called a “Big Sit” among us crazy birders.
Anyway, here is the report of the count of birds reported that day in December, listed by species (the rare ones are CAPITALIZED):
Boston Birders The 40th Greater Boston Christmas Bird Count (actually the 112th—Belmont, Jamaica Plain and Winchester have been covered since the very first CBC in 1900!) was held yesterday (Sunday, December 16) under some difficult weather especially after the noon hour. That did not damper the 102 observers in the field. The total number of species recorded was 125 plus SEVEN count week species (listed as CW)
We added TWO new species to the overall count—SORA RAIL and PAINTED BUNTING bringing the historical count to 228 species—AMAZING for an urban count. We had six new high counts (listed as HC) Highlights are capitalized and a brief location is indicated. Photos of many of these birds will be sent for documentation to National Audubon Society.
- Brant 106
- Canada Goose 7545
- Mute Swan 56
- Wood Duck 2
- Gadwall 1 CW
- American Wigeon 1
- American Black Duck 702
- Mallard 2160
- Northern Shoveler 7
- Northern Pintail 2
- Green-winged Teal 22
- Green-winged Teal (Eurasian) 1
- Canvasback 10
- REDHEAD 5- Hammond Pond
- Ring-necked Duck 123
- Greater Scaup 348
- Lesser Scaup 4
- KING EIDER 1- Dorchester Bay
- Common Eider 1046
- Surf Scoter 257
- White-winged Scoter 1244
- Black Scoter 10
- Long-tailed Duck 32
- Bufflehead 406
- Common Goldeneye 111
- BARROW’S GOLDENEYE 1- JFK Library, S. Boston
- Hooded Merganser 560 (High Count- HC)
- Common Merganser 467 (HC)
- Red-breasted Merganser 411
- Ruddy Duck 132
- Wild Turkey 56
- Red-throated Loon 43
- Common Loon 31
- Pied-billed Grebe 15
- Horned Grebe 71
- Red-necked Grebe 3 LOW
- Double-crested Cormorant 11
- Great Cormorant 7
- Great Blue Heron 49
- Turkey Vulture CW
- Northern Harrier 2
- Sharp-shinned Hawk 9
- Cooper’s Hawk 20
- BALD EAGLE 1 adult Chestnut Hill Res
- Red-tailed Hawk 71
- VIRGINIA RAIL 1- Oasis, E. Boston
- SORA 1 NEW TO COUNT- the Oasis, East Boston
- American Coot 151
- KILLDEER 2
- Greater Yellowlegs 3
- Sanderling 8
- Purple Sandpiper 3
- Dunlin 7
- Wilson’s Snipe 2
- Bonaparte’s Gull 13
- Ring-billed Gull 2070
- Herring Gull 1451
- Iceland Gull 1
- Lesser Black-backed Gull 1
- Great Black-backed Gull 204
- THICK-BILLED MURRE 1 Spectacle Island
- RAZORBILL 8
- Rock Pigeon 1508
- Mourning Dove 529
- Eastern Screech-Owl 51
- Great Horned Owl 15
- SNOWY OWL 3 Logan Airport
- BARRED OWL 12 (HC)
- Short-eared Owl CW- Logan Airport
- NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL 1 Putterham, Brookline
- Belted Kingfisher 11
- Red-bellied Woodpecker 55 (HC)
- Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 2
- Downy Woodpecker 310
- Hairy Woodpecker 23
- Northern Flicker 41 (HC)
- PILEATED WOODPECKER 1- Middlesex Fells
- American Kestrel 3
- Merlin 7
- Peregrine Falcon 9 (Tied HC)
- NORTHERN SHRIKE 1 Deer Island
- Blue Jay 462
- American Crow 499
- Fish Crow CW a BIG miss
- Common Raven 3 (tied HC)
- Horned Lark 30
- Black-capped Chickadee 903
- Tufted Titmouse 280
- Red-breasted Nuthatch 44
- White-breasted Nuthatch 276
- Brown Creeper 17
- Winter Wren 10 (HC)
- Marsh Wren 2
- Carolina Wren 80
- Golden-crowned Kinglet 36
- Ruby-crowned Kinglet 7
- Hermit Thrush 7
- American Robin 2969
- Gray Catbird 1
- Northern Mockingbird 127
- European Starling 10431
- AMERICAN PIPIT 3 Point of Pines, Revere
- Cedar Waxwing 37
- LAPLAND LONGSPUR 2 Bear River, Saugus
- Snow Bunting 176
- BLACK AND WHITE WARBLER 1 Olmsted Park
- Orange-crowned Warbler 1
- NASHVILLE WARBLER 1 Fenway Victory Garden
- MACGILLIVRAY’S WARBLER 1 Fenway Victory Garden
- Yellow-rumped Warbler 8
- Yellow-breasted Chat 3
- Eastern Towhee 2
- American Tree Sparrow 171
- Clay-colored Sparrow CW- Busa Farm
- Field Sparrow 3
- Savannah Sparrow 9
- Fox Sparrow CW
- Song Sparrow 529
- Swamp Sparrow 15
- White-throated Sparrow 419
- Dark-eyed Junco 1262
- Northern Cardinal 364
- PAINTED BUNTING 1- NEW TO COUNT- Thompson Island
- Red-winged Blackbird 54
- RUSTY BLACKBIRD 3 Lexington
- Pine Grosbeak CW
- House Finch 211
- RED CROSSBILL 21
- WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL 27
- Common Redpoll 65
- PINE SISKIN 1
- American Goldfinch 496g
- House Sparrow 3324
You will have to get some help from your mom or dad to add all those numbers up. Papa is too lazy for that. But you can see that on that day there were _over ten thousand starlings_counted which was way more than the House Sparrow at only 3,324. Maybe next year you can help us count all the birds, starting from the very center!
I hope you like this very big answer to a very big question
–Papa