Here is a collection of photos that I took on five of the six Christmas Bird Counts I did this past season (December 2018 to January 2019): Santa Cruz (12/15), Oakland (12/16), Pinnacles National Park (12/30), Moss Landing (1/1) and Panoche Valley (1/5). I didn't take any photos during the sixth CBC, Monterey Peninsula (12/27), when I was on a rocking and rolling boat with too much wind and too few birds to bother with photos. I was also on boats for the Oakland and Moss Landing counts, but the weather was calmer those days.

Christmas Bird Counts are a long-running citizen science project in which teams of birders attempt to count the birds in a circle 15 miles in diameter. Thousands of CBCs are held each year, mostly in North America. Despite the name, they are not usually held on Christmas Day, but any day between December 14 and January 5. If the circle extends into the ocean or other large body of water, boats may be used to count in that part of the circle. CBC data is used by researchers to study changes in bird populations and distribution.