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Bird lovers across Tennessee are enthusiastic participants in the nation’s longest-running community science project.

The Audubon Society’s 125th annual Christmas Bird Count is underway, to collect valuable data on bird populations. Tennessee is home to more than 400 bird species.

Cyndi Routledge, secretary of the Tennessee Ornithological Society and president of its Nashville chapter, said bird watchers will go through a circled area with a 15-mile radius, counting the number of birds they see or hear.

“The Christmas Bird Count, it gives us a snapshot of the data of the population of the birds during winter,” Routledge explained. “It provides us with long-term information on specific species, and how the urbanization and climate change is affecting the species, or not.”

Routledge pointed out a 2019 Cornell University study called attention to a significant decline in bird populations. The analysis, informed by Christmas Bird Count data and other research, found that North America has lost roughly 3 billion birds, or nearly one-fourth of its total bird population, since 1970.

Routledge added although not officially endangered, there are species they no longer see in Clarksville during the annual count, due to rapid habitat loss.

“We used to see birds like horned larks, Eastern meadowlarks, American pipits, loggerhead shrikes that we no longer see,” Routledge outlined. “They do not show up on our count. As a birder, I don’t even see them when I’m out and about, just enjoying the day, looking for birds.”

Routledge noted her organization, the first bird club in the Southeast, has been conducting the count for 109 years. The National Audubon Society’s annual nationwide Christmas Bird Count runs through Jan. 5 and includes the U.S. and Canada, as well as Central and South America.