Untitled Document

The First Cocoa Christmas Bird Count

By Karl Eichhorn

Back in the late 60s I recorded several of Allan Cruickshank’s Christmas bird counts on an old German reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tape I used was some I had recycled from the Cape, and about a year ago I became concerned that this old tape might deteriorate and these historical recordings would be lost. Accordingly, I transferred these recordings to regular cassette tapes. Then, this summer, I decided to once again move the recordings to another media, this time to CDs, using a special program for our Macintosh. In reviewing these I found that, at the end of the 1969 count tally, Allan had included a short discussion relating how the Cocoa CBC had originated. We felt that this would be of interest to the members of our Chapter. Though neither Betty nor I can take dictation, we did manage, by running the original tape back and forth many times, to completely transcribe Allan’s presentation. What follows is a verbatim transcription of Allan’s presentation on that evening of December 30, 1969, so long ago.

The Beginning of the Cocoa Christmas Count
By Allan D. Cruickshank

“Well, if you want to know the history of this count, the Cocoa count started in Minneapolis, Minnesota at an American Ornithologists Union convention. We were sitting at a table and I said someday I’d like to take a Christmas count in my favorite area in Florida. We didn’t live here. And Dr. Joseph Howell from the University of Tennessee was across the table and his eyes popped open and he said “Where’s your favorite area?” I said “Cocoa-Port Canaveral.” And he said “My favorite area is Oak Hill.” I said “All right—you get off before I do at Christmas time—you go down. Let me know where to meet you on the Christmas count.” So he sent us a quick note and said “Cocoa. Your area far superior to Oak Hill. Meet me at Cocoa Post Office on such a day.”

We came down and just my wife, Joe Howell, and I took the Christmas count. We didn’t know the area and, as I recall, we got 145 species which was very good.

Then we discovered there was such a thing as the Indian River Audubon Society. The rarest bird they had was W. Foster White. And he fed pheasants and other birds oat-meal cakes and raisins and everything else. And from that point on, we developed into the Indian River Audubon Society we are today.”