The Sunshine Coast Natural History Society will be conducting their 39th annual Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, Dec. 16. The 27th annual Pender Harbour count, organized by the Pender Harbour Wildlife Society, is on Wednesday, Dec. 20. I will report details from the two counts in my next column.
The first Christmas Bird Count was held on Christmas Day 1900 when Frank Chapman organized 25 of his friends to spend a day in the field censusing birds as an alternative to the prevailing “side-hunt” where shooting parties went forth and shot any living thing, and the team with the most dead bodies at the end of the day was declared the winner.
The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) in the U.S. is organized by the Audubon Society and in Canada by Bird Studies Canada. This year will be the 118th CBC, often referred to as the world’s oldest citizen-science project.
In 2016 2,536 counts were conducted all over North America and an increasing number in Central and South America. Over 73,000 people participated counting over 56 million birds of 2,636 species. The highest count was 456 species on the Mindo count in Ecuador, an indication of the spectacular degree of biodiversity in the tropical world. Counts in the Canadian Arctic find only one or two species, one of which is the raven. The long-term database provides a trove of information concerning the populations of mid-winter birds in the New World.
Each count takes place on one day during the Christmas period and is conducted each year within the same circle 24 kilometres in diameter. The Sunshine Coast circle is centred in Roberts Creek and covers the area from Port Mellon to West Sechelt. Most years the Sunshine Coast count records a species total in the 90s, with a highest ever total of 105 species in 2009. Pender Harbour generally reports 75 to 85 species with a high of 87 in 1993.
Last year the Gibsons-Sechelt count was conducted during an outbreak of Arctic weather with frigid temperatures for a few days prior to count day. In the past we have observed that this weather drives red-breasted sapsuckers out of the mountains into the relative warmth of the coastal lowlands. And so it was that the sapsucker count on Dec. 17, 2016 was 124 individuals, a new record high for any count in the entire history of the CBC going back to 1900.
If you see any unusual or unidentified birds at your feeder or elsewhere please contact me at tony@whiskeyjacknaturetours.com or 604-885-5539.
