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Christmas Bird Count coming up

The Sunshine Coast Natural History Society will be conducting their 40th annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) on Saturday, Dec. 15, and the 28th Pender Harbour count, organized by Pender Harbour Wildlife Society, is on Wednesday, Dec. 19.
bird count

The Sunshine Coast Natural History Society will be conducting their 40th annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) on Saturday, Dec. 15, and the 28th Pender Harbour count, organized by Pender Harbour Wildlife Society, is on Wednesday, Dec. 19. I will report details from the two counts in my next column. 

The first Christmas Bird Count was held in New England 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 “sidehunt” 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. Fortunately we have moved on from that disastrous ethic and in 2018 the Christmas Bird Count in the U.S. is organized by the Audubon Society and in Canada by Bird Studies Canada. This year will be the 119th CBC. It is often referred to as the world’s oldest citizen-science project and the long-term data base provides a trove of information concerning the populations of mid-winter birds in the New World. In 2017, 2,585 counts were conducted all over North America and an increasing number in Latin America and nearly 77,000 people participated, counting 60 million birds of 2,673 species. Count results ranged from two species at Arctic Bay, Nunavut to 502 species at Yanayacu, Ecuador. Victoria was the most productive Canadian count with 144 species and Canada as a whole scored 287 species. 

Each count takes place on one day during a specified period around Christmas and is conducted within the same circle, 15 miles or 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 88 species with the notable birds being orange-crowned warbler and common redpoll. The Pender Harbour count was 82 species with notable birds being peregrine falcon and white-winged crossbill. 

In addition to the birds counted on “count-day” we also tally those species recorded during “count-week,” which extends three days before and after the count-day. For the Sunshine Coast count this period is Dec. 12 to 18, and for Pender Harbour it is Dec. 16 to 22. If you see any unusual or unidentified birds at your feeder or elsewhere, please contact me at tony@whiskeyjacknaturetours.com or 604-885-5539 so they can potentially be included in the count.