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Christmas Bird Count marks 120th year

The Sunshine Coast Natural History Society will be conducting the 41st annual Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, Dec. 14, and the 29th Pender Harbour count, organized by the Pender Harbour Wildlife Society, is on Wednesday, Dec. 18.
Anna’s hummingbird
Anna’s hummingbird has taken to over-wintering on the Sunshine Coast.

The Sunshine Coast Natural History Society will be conducting the 41st annual Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, Dec. 14, and the 29th Pender Harbour count, organized by the Pender Harbour Wildlife Society, is on Wednesday, Dec. 18. 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 ornithologist 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 2019 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 120th CBC and it is often referred to as the world’s oldest citizen-science project.

This long-term database provides a trove of information concerning the populations of mid-winter birds in the New World. In 2018, 2,615 counts were conducted mainly in North America with an increasing number in Latin America. Nearly 80,000 people participated, counting 48 million birds of 2,638 species. The highest count in North America was 237 species at Mad Island, Texas, and Yanayacu, Ecuador was the overall leader with an amazing 491 species. 

Each count takes place on one day during a specified period around Christmas and all are conducted within a 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 80 to 85 species with a high of 87 in 1993. Last year the Gibsons/Sechelt count was 88 species (plus two count-week species) with the notable birds being two yellow-rumped warblers, a swamp sparrow, a Lincoln’s sparrow and a flock of 20 goldfinches. The Pender Harbour count was 84 species with notable birds being black-capped chickadee (which is now colonizing the Pender Harbour area), swamp sparrow and pygmy owl. 

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 year, this period is Dec. 11 to 17, and for Pender Harbour Dec. 15 to 21. 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 tally. 

Good birding.