The tools are a timer, thermometer, clipboard, data sheets, pencil and binoculars. More than 3,000 volunteer birders carry out the survey throughout the United States every year. The goal is to supply data about birds.

About 30 Maine volunteers have assigned routes on local roads throughout the state. Some ardent birders take on three or four routes. One is enough for me. I organized my tools in the dark, noted the temperature, turned on the timer for three minutes and began.

The thrushes had started to sing – veeries, hermit thrushes and robins, several of each. I had to concentrate on each species at a time, note the numbers, then go to the next species. The rules are to count species and numbers for exactly three minutes, then go a half-mile to the next stop and repeat the routine, for a total of 50 stops. The protocol is designed to detect increases or decreases in bird populations throughout the United States and southern Canada.

It’s a cold morning, 43 degrees. It takes a while for bird activity to start. I hear the ascending buzz of a parula warbler, the musical trill of a pine warbler, the short song of the magnolia warbler, the longer song of the chestnut-sided warbler.

I have six stops along the Whalesback. Usually I hear the thunder-pumping of a bittern, sometimes two, in the wetland along the Union River below. Not this cold morning, though.

Many trucks go along Route 9. It’s hard to hear birds when trucks roar by. I was relieved when my route turned south towards Mariaville. There, the road is narrow with little traffic at 5 a.m.; the sun has risen; birds can be seen as well as heard.

I saw bluebirds sitting on the telephone wires on several stops. I also heard the high ascending song of the blackburnian warbler, a bird with nearly florescent orange on its throat. It was formerly called “firethroat.” Too bad I only heard it, but most birds are heard and not seen on a breeding bird survey in the dense forest of Maine.

Quickly the stops went by. On stop number 28, I spotted a vesper sparrow, not an everyday bird for me; it is a bird of the blueberry barrens. And at stop 49 I spotted my favorite warbler, the Canada warbler, its vivid yellow breast accented with a black “necklace.” It’s a bird of hummocky cedar swamps with a dense understory.

I ended about 9:30 a.m. with about 500 birds logged in. Scientists undertake many sophisticated statistical analyses of data amassed by birders nationwide in the breeding bird survey since the 1960s. These analyses show that many bird species are seriously declining, especially those that undertake the dangerous migration to Central and South America.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.