LEWISTON – Honk.

The muted sound drew the four birders from their warm sport utility vehicle parked in a stranger’s driveway. The team members, two men and two women, hopped out into the cold, looked at each other and beamed.

For bird watchers, it’s the unusual bird that supplies the thrill. And none knew this sound.

Today’s event – a dawn-till-dusk count of Lewiston-Auburn’s bird population – had begun 15 minutes earlier. Already, something new, they thought.

Marsha Haines of Auburn led the way, walking down the icy driveway until she stopped abruptly and began giggling.

“It’s a barnyard goose,” she called back to the others.

Does it count?

“It only counts if we want to embarrass ourselves,” Haines said, still smiling.

Yet, the count is serious business.

Bird clubs across the U.S. and in parts of Canada and Central America planned to take part in the annual count, meant to act as a kind of snapshot of the continent’s bird population. Experts use the numbers to find trends or spot migration patterns.

By Saturday night the preliminary count for Lewiston-Auburn was 39 species, down from the normal 49 species, said compiler Stan DeOrsey. “We’re low,” DeOrsey said. “Usually we have 49 species.” They saw no owls, few hawks and few ducks.

The good news was that seven bald eagles were spotted, most were along the river, plus 83 yellow gold finches, 380 mallards, more than 400 chickadees and 74 Common Redpolls, which had migrated from Canada, DeOrsey said.

Most of the bird counting work is being done by hobbyists, who are giving up their entire day to scour neighborhoods, counting the crows in the fields and the pigeons on the telephone lines.

Lewiston-Auburn’s counters come from the Stanton Bird Club, which has done the fowl census for 24 years.

The club is charged with examining a circular area about 15 miles across and centered at Bates College. The circle is then divided into six areas, each the shape of a pizza slice. Each area has its own team of counters.

At the end of the day, the teams all gather together, they compare their findings and add up the numbers in each species.

Last year, their were more than 3,000 crows and three eagles. Early Saturday morning, Marsha Haines’ group saw no eagles. She was joined this year by Hilda Davis, Kathy Haines and Rob Graham.

Together, they were charged with covering a wedge-shaped area of Lewiston which ran from the downtown to the corridor of land between Lisbon and Sabattus streets.

They began at 7 a.m., just as the sky was beginning to brighten. They saw surprisingly few birds.

There were finches and chickadees, mallard ducks and at least four common goldeneyes.

“Last year, it seemed that there were so many more,” said Haines, who then worked as the club’s compiler. She was responsible for adding all the numbers and forwarding them to the people at Audubon.

“We were in a different area, but I don’t know if that’s the reason,” she said. “This year, the weather is so much better.”

For the last two years, the count was held amid a cold rain. This year, it was just cold. It seemed to bother them little. All four dressed warmly.

For nearly an hour Saturday, they stood on the bank of the Androscoggin River near the waste water treatment plant. As dump trucks hurried past to the plant, the group stood beside the river, examined the chewed wood left by a beaver and watched for birds. Ice at the water’s edge cracked and shattered, sometimes crashing.

Meanwhile, they scanned for birds amid the floating ice and bare trees. Besides their gloves and scarves, each carried a pair of binoculars. Hilda Davis carried a small telescope too. Kathy Haines had a camera.

Though she has been a birder for 25 years, Haines said there are still birds in local forests she has yet to see. It’s what keeps her going.

Some bird watchers create life lists, journals which record when, where and how they spot their first bird of each species.

“It’s knowing that they’re not all the same,” she said. “Once you find a new bird, you’re hooked for life.”

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