Alaskans join Audubon's annual holiday bird count
For more than 100 years, bird lovers have held annual event to document numbers
ANCHORAGE - Like most of the bird-loving citizen scientists who take part in the annual Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, Nicole Sperbeck accepted a little discomfort as part of the routine.
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Her bare hands were cold and stiff as she drove through an area north of Anchorage recently, and no wonder.
The windows of her sport utility vehicle were rolled down and the moon roof was open. Temperatures in the 20s chilled the inside of the Denali Yukon, and a light snowfall dropped flakes on the front seat.
Sperbeck barely noticed. She was too busy keeping one eye on the road and the other on the sky above, looking for small black dots atop tall spruce trees.
For more than a century, bird lovers have set aside a day in December to roam city streets, coastlines, hiking trails, fishing docks, parking lots, open water and even garbage dumps for the Christmas Bird Count.
Bird counts, both large and small, are held all over Alaska.
Resourceful birders do just about anything to get to where the ravens, eagles, chickadees and redpolls live.
In Seward, some climb into a boat and sail across a sometimes rocky Resurrection Bay with the hope of seeing a yellow-billed loon. In Kodiak, some might strap on a pair of snowshoes and hike up a slippery mountainside for a chance to spot a ptarmigan. In Unalaska, everyone battles with fierce winds and bitter cold for the prospect of spying a harlequin duck.
"They have to be hardy folks out here," said Suzi Golodoff, who organizes the count in Unalaska.
This year's Unalaska count produced about 40 species. Anchorage's had 41. Mat-Su's had 32. Seward's had 66. Juneau's had 70. Gustavus's had 74. And Kodiak's had 77, allowing the island community to maintain its status as heavyweight champion of Alaska birding.
"It's been quite a few years that we've had the most," Kodiak count organizer Rich MacIntosh said.
Eventually, data from the counts will be posted on Audubon's Web site. As of Tuesday, North American bird lovers had reported seeing more than 8 million birds during the one-day counts, and results are still coming in.