The ongoing census: the South Bend Christmas Bird Count — and the rookery that is not here

THE COUNT · AND A SEARCHED NEGATIVE FOR THE HERONRY

Chapman's survey has a living successor, and it is a circle. The South Bend Christmas Bird Count — Audubon's winter census, run locally by the South Bend-Elkhart Bird Alliance (the South Bend-Elkhart Audubon Society until its renaming on 30 January 2024) — counts every bird found in one day inside a circle of 7.5-mile radius centered on downtown South Bend. The count is in its ninth decade: the eighty-first South Bend count was held on Saturday 14 December 2024, compiled by Lindsay Grossmann and reported in the Alliance's newsletter, The Leaves — a run of counts reaching back to the 1940s. Its geometry against this ground prints plainly: a downtown-centered circle reaches roughly seven miles to the CDP's own center, so the circle takes in Granger's southwestern sections and leaves its northeastern, state-line sections outside — the census covers part of this ground every year and the rest of it never, and both halves of that sentence matter to what the count can say about Granger. What the count says about the county, the state summaries keep in honours: across recent Audubon seasons the South Bend circle holds Indiana Christmas Count firsts and state highs — a Ross's × snow goose hybrid, a state first for the counts; ninety-one wild turkeys in one count, Chapman's vanished bird as a flock; eight purple finches, a state high; a Swainson's thrush, the state's tenth count record; a Tennessee warbler, a count first, and the state's second Nashville warbler in forty-seven years. The Alliance runs the county's May Count beside it and stewards its richest station — Potato Creek State Park, 240 recorded species on the Alliance's list, the county's deepest bird ground — so the ongoing census of the county's birds stands in competent, continuous hands, and Chapman's 1880 lists now have a December-by-December descendant against which the next century's changes will be measured. The rookery prints as the searched negative beside it: no great blue heron rookery — no heronry — is recorded for Granger or for St. Joseph County in the sources searched for this section. The bird itself is ordinary here: Chapman lists the great blue heron among the county's waders, herons fish Juday Creek and the county's ponds singly and in small parties, and the modern hotspot lists carry the species as a regular. But Indiana's named rookeries all stand in other counties — the Indiana Dunes Heron Rookery in Porter County, a hundred nests and more across some sixty years before the herons left it; the Highland rookery in Lake County; Hamilton County's Rookery Preserve; the great White River rookery at Indianapolis, some five hundred active nests in 1998; the Pigeon River rookery in Steuben County — and no source reached names one on this ground or anywhere in this county. The distinction is the finding: a heron is a sighting, a rookery is an institution, and this ground has the bird in plenty and the institution nowhere on the record.

Sources:

1. South Bend-Elkhart Bird Alliance, The Leaves (December 2024–January 2025; February 2025): the count circle of 7.5-mile radius centered on downtown South Bend; the 81st South Bend Christmas Bird Count, Saturday 14 December 2024, compiler Lindsay Grossmann; the society's renaming of 30 January 2024; Potato Creek State Park at 240 recorded species.
2. Audubon, Indiana Christmas Bird Count state summaries (119th–122nd counts): the South Bend circle's Ross's × snow goose hybrid (state CBC first), 91 wild turkeys, state-high 8 purple finches, Swainson's thrush (state's 10th CBC record), first White-winged Crossbill in seven years, CBC-first Tennessee warbler, second Nashville warbler in 47 years, 21 brown creepers.
3. Rookery negative, as searched: Indiana's named great blue heron rookeries in the sources reached — Indiana Dunes Heron Rookery (Porter County), Highland Heron Rookery (Lake County), Hamilton County Rookery Preserve, the Indianapolis White River rookery (~500 active nests, 1998), Pigeon River FWA (Steuben County) — none in St. Joseph County; the species itself regular in the county on Chapman's list and the modern hotspot record.