Special to BradfordToday, area bird watcher, Kevin Shackleton
As we end 2021 we mark the 122nd year since Christmas Bird counts were introduced as an alternative to the old Christmas Day bird shoot. I say bird shoot because then the idea was to slaughter as many birds as possible on Christmas Day without really planning to consume them. Over 2,000 communities in the Western Hemisphere now participate in this annual event which takes place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 next year.
I have lost track of when I did my first CBCC and can’t say how many I have done since then. I usually do two a year, one in the Kleinburg and the other in the Bradford-East Gwillimbury circle. Teams divide up a 24-kilometre diameter circle and spend a day prowling side roads, public spaces that might hold a few birds, checking feeders in urban areas and any place they can think of that might contain birds.
I have to confess that counting European Starling, House Sparrow and American Crows doesn’t really get me out of bed on a cold December or January morning, but the prospect of discovering an unseasonable Marsh Wren or a Snowy Owl on a bare marsh vegetable field does. The after-dark rendezvous with the other teams covering the circle is a good time to meet old birding friends and get a sense of how the winter bird population is shaping up. This is when you have a chance to show your bird-finding skills as each team wants to report the most different species in its section of the circle or the rarest species or the most of a difficult-to-find species, like Eastern Screech Owl.
Birds Canada wants you to have fun while doing the count. I usually have a team of congenial people willing to get up before dawn to listen for owls in my sectors. Most birds are found before noon and I usually spring for a team lunch where we map out the afternoon target locations where we might find species we have not seen in the morning. Pre-Covid, we would travel in one vehicle and there would be stories of past counts and remembering our birding buddies who have gone to the great birding heaven ahead of us. These days we might go in convoy, but there is still an opportunity to socialize as we leave our vehicles to scan fields and forests for feathered creatures.
At the end of the day, the organizer of the count compiles all the sightings and sends the information to Birds Canada and it passes the totals for each circle on to the US Audubon Society for eventual publication in an annual summary of the count results for North American. This data, collected by citizen scientists, is very useful in tracking population trends and developing conservation plans. If you would like more information about Christmas Bird Counts check the link here.
