As they entered a thicket in search of birds, Joe Hanfman and Joe Byrnes tracked lightly through virgin snow Wednesday morning in the chilly lull between an overnight dusting and a wallop of wintry precipitation.

"The worse the weather, the better the birding," Hanfman had said, repeating a birders' mantra about a rise in sightings as migrants appear to ride out storms and rare species show up in unusual places.

But nothing in nature applies all of the time.

While Hanfman identified the calls of four types of woodpeckers emanating from the woods of the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area off Trotter Road in Clarksville, none of them appeared.

"Birding is all about not having a guarantee about what you'll see," Byrnes said. "It's about the thrill of the chase."

Both members of the Howard County Bird Club will put their love of birding to scientific use Feb. 5 by organizing and participating in the 26th annual Howard County Mid-Winter Count, which is open to the public.

The bird census, always taken the first Saturday in February, aids scientists and environmentalists in their study of endangered and threatened species, and provides information on food supplies, bodies of water and climate change, Byrnes said.

Bird clubs in nine other counties also schedule midwinter counts between early January and early February, according to the website of the Maryland Ornithological Society.

"The count allows us to keep track of which species are here in Howard County," Byrnes said, adding that the daylong project is repeated every spring and fall on the same dates throughout the state. The county chapters submit the seasonal data to the MOS for further review.

Anyone, regardless of experience, is invited to join the 200-member Howard club in its effort to count every bird in the county. The long day spent walking around outdoors culminates in a "tally rally," with a potluck dinner followed by a reading of the species counts and the much-anticipated review of special sightings.

Veteran birders are always eager to share their findings with fellow enthusiasts — and even admit to enjoying bragging rights — but they're equally interested in taking new recruits under their wing, Byrnes said. Novices are paired with experienced birders.

"The bird count may be a bit competitive," he said, and members listen intently to learn who saw what and where they saw it. "But it's a very, very friendly day of camaraderie and a lot of fun."

Whether birders make a sighting on any given day does not affect their enjoyment of the hobby, Hanfman said.

On luckier outings than the one to the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area — such as a trip the same day to Blue Mash Trails off Route 108 in Olney to see a rough-legged hawk to which another birder had alerted him — Hanfman whips out his BlackBerry and snaps a digital picture of his find and then quickly dispatches it to a listserv of fellow birders across Maryland. Within minutes, hundreds can take part in his personal moment of discovery.

The retired industrial engineer is known for regularly making and sharing unusual sightings, and devotes about 40 hours a week to the hobby that he said is "like a full-time job." He goes birding most days and has traveled the world to further his knowledge.

"When I first started birding back in the '70s, you had to wait until you got home or stop at a pay phone to get a message to people about a bird you'd seen," he recalled. "By the time they could get there, it had usually flown away.

"Today, I can text people from the spot and tell them what I'm looking at, and they can come out right away and see it," he said.

The hawk, which he'd never seen in Montgomery County, was a rare visitor from the tundra that he would have surely missed in earlier times.

Online tracking sites such as eBird help birders keep track of what they've seen and share their sightings with scientists and other birders.

The goal of eBird, which is managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, is to maximize the utility and accessibility of the vast numbers of bird observations made each year by recreational and professional birdwatchers, according to its website.

"Technology has had an effect on more people seeing more birds," Hanfman said, noting that 95 species have been recorded in the county since Jan. 1, a very good year so far. Last year, 242 species were seen, he said.

"Thirty years ago, we saw a lot of northern birds in Maryland, but we're not seeing them anymore," he said. "Northern areas are warming up, and those birds have no need to come down here anymore — that's the somewhat controversial global-warming theory, anyway."

Nowadays, if someone sees a northern grosbeak, "they get very excited," Hanfman said.

One of the most thrilling moments in Byrnes' birding career was snapping a photograph of a yellow-nosed albatross facing down a great black-backed gull near the Outer Banks. The only difficult thing to decide afterward was whether seeing the seabirds together in the wild was more rewarding than hearing from a birder he'd met in the field that Byrnes' photo is the background on his computer desktop, he said.

Joanne Solem, who helped found the Howard County midwinter count, said that unlike many, she could never pinpoint a specific sighting that sparked her lifelong love affair with birding.

The longtime North Laurel resident, who shares the hobby with her husband, Bob, said she was aware of nature from a young age and gravitated toward bird-watching when she was in elementary school in southern Wisconsin.

Since the Howard midwinter count was established in 1986, the small number of Canada geese seen in early years has grown into thousands, a change that is "not a positive trend," she said.

But bald eagle sightings, rare 25 years ago, now routinely number eight to 10 each winter count, she said,

and their presence is regarded as "one of the county's big success stories."

Solem said she hopes county residents of all ages will consider joining the count or attending a monthly program or field trip sponsored by the club.

"When you see and feel the excitement of someone else identifying a bird for the first time, it's like looking at it through different eyes," Solem said. "You get to relive when you first saw a Blackburnian warbler or a redhead.

"And once that attraction is established," she said, "birding just takes on a life of its own."

If you go

What: The 26th annual Howard County Mid-Winter Bird Count

When: Feb. 5

Where: Meet-up locations will be arranged in advance by seven area coordinators

Information: E-mail Joe Byrnes at LBRoller@verizon.net; the club's website is howardbirds.org