2025 Eugene Christmas Bird Count Overview

The 2025 Eugene Christmas Bird Count (ECBC) will be held on Sunday, December 28. This will be our 84th Christmas Bird Count! Count Week this year is December 25-31.

We have some updates this year. Dick Lamster, the longtime Count Coordinator, retired after completing the 2024 Count. He leaves some big shoes to fill! In response, we’ve reorganized, adding four quadrant coordinators to communicate with team captains and connect new ECBC participants with a team.

• North quadrant: Caryn Stoess (team leader for Area 18 Thistledown Farm)
• East quadrant: Laura Johnson(participant in Area 6A Alton Baker)
• South quadrant: Josh Galpern (team leader for Area 9 Amazon)
• Fern Ridge: Ellen Cantor(team leader for Area 21 Royal & Fisher)

Marcia Maffei will continue to coordinate the Home Counters (see CBC page) and I, Vjera Thompson, will continue to coordinate the data for the Count.

The other big news is that we have reserved the Eugene Garden Club (1645 High St) for the Countdown after the ECBC. This is the same location that many will remember from attending our former popular chili feed Countdowns. The chili feed crew retired in January 2020 so we are looking for a few volunteers to help plan, set-up, and tear down for the Countdown. Field participants are invited to join us at the Garden Club to eat together and review the findings of the day. (Unfortunately, our space is inadequate for including the Home Counters.) More details will be published to the team captains closer to the Count Day.

If you have participated in ECBC in the past, your team captain will be reaching out to you. If you are new, there are two options. If you would like to join the Count in the field, please fill out the interest form here: tinyurl.com/6t8b4mkz. Questions can be sent to EugeneChristmasBirdCount@gmail.com.

You can view results of past ECBCs, as well as all the other CBCs in North America, at christmasbirdcount.org. Our count code is OREU.

By Vjera Thompson