Eyes on the sky for Audubon Annual Christmas Count
A varied thrush is pictured here in this photo shared online by the National Park Service at Glacier. These birds are commonly found in northwest Montana, Idaho and other western states. (via Flickr)
Birders of Coeur d’Alene will be traipsing today into the wilderness in the biting cold, binoculars in hand, to count birds.
“It’s a great thing. It’s an outdoor thing,” said Doug Ward, Christmas bird count compiler for the Coeur d'Alene Audubon group. “It’s a hobby for anyone, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.”
The National Audubon Society is in its 124th year of the Annual Christmas Count and Coeur d’Alene has been participating for 30 years.
“I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid,” Ward said. “I used to go to the zoo and spend all my time in the aviary. I just thought it was so cool and I loved matching birds to pictures.”
The semi-scientific study directs roughly 30 volunteer watchers within a 15-mile radius to count all the birds and bird species within 24 hours. The information is then used to compile national bird reports that show trends in populations, variations in migration patterns and other data.
Ward has seen drops in the number of raptors and hawks in our region because of the shrinking prairie, but he’s seen huge increases in the Eurasian collared dove, which wasn't originally prevalent in this area. The collared dove nests and thrives in urban areas, and populations have spiked as developments have grown.
“There’s a lot of places that used to be good habitat for birds, and you see the bird population change,” Ward said.
In last year's record-breaking count, volunteers saw 83 different species and almost 8,900 birds. Almost a third were Canada geese, but others were rare species to our region. Someone sighted a Eurasian wigeon, typically only seen in Europe or Asia.
“Today I stumbled across one that was completely unexpected,” Ward said. “Something I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. It was a sparrow from the Yukon across to Hudson Bay, way up north in the Arctic Circle.”
This sparrow typically only flies in that region or into the Dakotas, Ward said, but “birds have wings.”
This year the Coeur d’Alene Audubon Society is sponsoring the local count, and results will be posted around March at www.audubon.org.