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CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNT Last year it was the fish crow. The year before that it was the black rail and the sharp-tailed sparrow. What oddity in the Nantucket avian world will birders discover during the fifty-third year of the Nantucket Christmas Bird Count?

You'll have to tromp around through scrub oak thickets, brave howling winds along the eastern shore and endure birder-speak for all the daylight hours on Dec. 29 to find out. Or you could just check this space in our Jan. 9 issue. Either way, the 108th Audubon Christmas Bird Count is coming in 10 days. In fact, the full three week bird-spotting Christmas Bird Count began Dec. 14 and runs through Jan. 5, when birding groups based in 35 towns around the state will canvass their areas looking for birds in what are called "circles" for the numbers of bird species and numbers of birds found within each.

On Nantucket, bird count preparations begin Dec. 28 at 7 p.m. at the UMass Field Station at 180 Polpis Road. There, birders are divided into groups led by expert birders to cover each section of the island. At the end of the day on Dec. 29, everyone returns to the field station to tally up the birds seen and counted. Those with limited mobility can count the species and numbers of birds they see at their feeders and call them in to either Edie Ray at 228-1693 or Ken Blackshaw at 228-0709.

If you want to be part of the action but not the tabulation, drivers, notetakers and spotters are needed. Call either number above to volunteer. For those who want more than one day of counting, the three-week count includes counts all over the state, a listing for which is at www.massbird.org.

NO PARKING AT LILY POND For the rest of the winter, anyone hoping to access the Lily Pond property owned by the Nantucket Islands Land Bank is going have to park in town and walk.

The Land Bank is not trying to keep people off the property, just the construction vehicles of a crew working on a house on North Liberty Street. After having the Land Bank's no-parking signs removed and getting no cooperation from the project's contractor, Land Bank Executive Director Eric Savetsky said the Land Bank blocked off the parking area with several large boulders.

The rocks will remain throughout the winter, both to prevent the parking scofflaws and others from parking there while Chip Webster moves the Land Bank's former employee cottage at 15 North Liberty St. to his own lot, and the Land Bank moves the late Erna Blair's house from 27 North Liberty St. to the vacated lot.

Getting to the Lily Pond property from town is easy. Go up either Gay or Quince Streets from Centre Street. Walk to the left (south) of the Academy Hill Apartments and locate a set of stairs that head west down to Lily Street via Snake Alley. Cross Lily Street and walk down the grass path between two houses that are directly across the street. This leads to a boardwalk running into the Lily Pond.

BEACH RETREAT Not wasting any time in getting their home as far away from the marauding, unpredictable forces of the Atlantic Ocean as possible, John and Marny Conforti, and Ronald G. and Diane R. Russo of Brooklyn, N.Y., owners of 34 Massachusetts Ave., have already taken one big step backwards.

Last week, at the Historic District Commission's Dec. 11 meeting, these two couples secured HDC permission to move their cottage back on their lot. During the Nov. 3 nor'easter, the Confortis' and the Russos' cottage sustained heavy damage, with waves blasting a gaping hole in the concrete block foundation, allowing sea water to wash into the basement.

Conforti told The Nantucket Independent that they still have 150 feet of lot left inland of where their cottage sits today. These Brooklynites have owned their summer beachside paradise for more than 20 years and admit that they could never afford such a house in 2007, so they will do whatever they can

keep their cottage intact. I