Early on a cold Friday morning, January 2, 2026, fourteen enthusiastic birders set out with their binoculars and spotting scopes in tow to seek, identify, and count birds on and around Seabrook Island for the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). Seabrook is part of the Sea Island SC count organized by Aaron Given, Wildlife Biologist at Kiawah Island and has participated in this count for the last nine years.
The purpose of collecting this data is that it allows Audubon researchers, conservation biologists, wildlife agencies and other interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America.
The birders who participated in the CBC on Seabrook Island are not your average birders! These birders covered over nine miles on foot and spent a total of over 24 hours of combined time, listening for bird calls, scanning trees for signs of movement, and identifying bird species. On the golf courses, carts were driven more than eight miles to search for birds and count both species and individual birds. In addition to seeing birds, beautiful photographs were captured of some of the marvelous birds on our island.
Can you guess how many species of different birds were found? Our team counted an amazing 101 species! Do you want to know how many birds in total they saw? A total of 3,623 birds! In addition, on the home front, four birders watched their backyard feeders for almost six hours of total time and saw 28 different species of birds and 137 birds in total.
And these are just the numbers for Seabrook Island and Bohicket, birds seen by our team of volunteers. The official count for Seabrook Island, which includes Freshfields but not Bohicket, was 99 species and 3634 birds around the island, and 27 species and 137 birds counted from backyards. Aaron Given will be publishing a consolidated report for all of Sea Islands CBC. His numbers are summarized by geographic boundaries rather than political boundaries, so the numbers appear slightly different.
Participating in the Christmas Bird Count is another example of how Seabrook Island Birders strive to fulfill their vision of watching, learning, and protecting the birds of Seabrook Island so that they are here to be enjoyed for years to come.
Written by Deanna Forsythe
Photos by Alan Fink and Gina Sanders