Birders score some rare finds during Fairbanks' Bird Count
FAIRBANKS - We were idling down a back road above Farmer's Loop on Saturday when I noticed a small bird light in a small chokecherry tree in the yard of one of the many affluent homes that lined the road.
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"There's one!" I blurted out to alert Bud and Jamie Marshner, who were sitting in the front seat of their red Honda CRV.
Bud hit the brakes and we crawled to a stop, 20 feet from the tree. Jamie hit a button to lower her window and I did the same from the back seat, grabbing my camera in the process.
While I'm not what you would call an expert bird watcher, or even a novice one for that matter, I could tell the bird wasn't one you normally see in Fairbanks during the winter. It wasn't a black-capped or boreal chickadee. It wasn't a redpoll. It wasn't a white-winged crossbill. It wasn't a Bohemian waxwing. It wasn't a gray jay.
"What is it?" I asked, directing my query at the Marshners. "I've never seen it before."
Both Bud and Jamie pulled out their binoculars to get a closer look at the bird while I began snapping pictures with a 200mm lens.
"It looks like that bird that Nancy sent out a picture of," Jamie said. "I think it's the same bird."
We had all seen the picture of a Townsend's solitaire that Nancy DeWitt, one of Fairbanks' most astute birders, had sent out over the Internet just a few days earlier. She had taken the picture at her feeder, which was located a few miles away from where we were.
From a distance, this looked like the same bird, though it was tough to tell by looking at it through a 200mm camera lens.
Jamie broke out her birding book while Bud and I snapped pictures through our telephoto lenses. The bird cooperated by remaining in the tree for about a minute before zipping off. Even then, we weren't sure what we had seen. We all thought it was a Townsend's solitaire but none of us were willing to go out on a limb and say so.
"We'll have to take a closer look at it when we get home," Bud said, alluding to the pictures we had taken.
But the more we talked and thought about it, the more convinced we were that we had seen something special. We all agreed it was different than anything else we had ever seen around Fairbanks during the winter.
It wasn't until I returned to the office later in the day and compared some of the photos I took to the one that DeWitt had sent over that I realized that we had hit the birding jackpot.
Exciting day
As we climbed into his red Honda CRV around 11 a.m., Bud Marshner couldn't contain himself.
"Are you ready for a really exciting day?" remarked Marshner, sarcasm oozing through the grin on his face.
We - Marshner, his wife, Jamie and myself - were preparing to embark on Fairbanks' annual Christmas Bird Count, a one-day event aimed at counting as many birds as possible in a specific 177-square mile circle that is 15 miles in diameter.
The count has been held in Fairbanks for the past 47 years and is part of the much larger and older National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, which is now in its 108th year and is the biggest citizen science project in the world. The count is used to track trends in bird populations locally and worldwide Data collected in the count has served as fodder for dozens, if not hundreds of scientific studies.
I arranged to spend the day counting birds with the Marshners, who like all counters, are members of the Arctic Audubon Society, which organizes the count. Jamie serves as the count coordinator for the Farmer's Loop area, one of nine count areas in Fairbanks. The Marshners have been participating in the count for the past 12 years, ever since they moved to Fairbanks from Denver.
"We've already seen two ravens this morning," reported Jamie as we pulled out of their driveway on Viewpointe Drive off Farmer's Loop, a few miles north of Fairbanks.
"Do we count those?" I asked.
"You bet," said Bud, before spotting a third raven while turning onto Farmer's Loop. "There's another raven."
Jamie checked her watch and SUV's odometer and made note of both on her count sheet.
"We have to keep track of the time and miles," she explained.
The Marshners laugh at the thought of being called "avid" birders. They prefer to think of themselves as "recreational" birders, said Jamie.
That was illustrated when Bud spotted a flock of about 15 redpolls leaving a feeder at a house at the end of Goshawk Lane.
"Common or species?" Jamie asked.
The question drew a laugh from Bud, a 53-year-old construction project manager for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
"I'm proud that I could tell they were redpolls by the way they were flying, much less what kind they are," he told Jamie, who works at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
We spent the next two hours driving around the back roads and subdivisions above Farmer's Loop looking for birds. At certain spots we would roll the windows down and listen for woodpeckers but didn't hear any.
While it may seem more romantic to walk, ski or mush through the woods to look and listen for birds, it's a lot more practical to drive.
"We've got such a big area and have so much ground to cover you have to drive," explained Jamie Marshner.
More than once homeowners have approached the Marshners to see if they were "casing out" the neighborhood, said Bud.
"If you saw someone stop in front of your house with a pair of binoculars and start looking in your front yard that might draw you suspicion, too," he said with a chuckle.
After completing our route on the roads, we skied two miles on the ski trails at Pearl Creek Elementary School looking and listening for birds. The trails were nice but the birds were scarce.
Other than the Townsend's solitaire, our day was relatively quiet. We recorded 14 ravens, 16 black-capped chickadees, two common redpolls and 26 undetermined redpolls.
"At least it's not 40 below like it is in some years," said Bud at one point as we were driving down the road with our windows open.
Discussing the day
Following the day's counting activities, birders gather to compile their counts while discussing the day's events over a potluck dinner.
Our sighting of the Townsend's solitaire, which was confirmed by one of the photos I blew up and printed out, was one of the highlights of the day.
While it wasn't like I had captured a photo of the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, I still felt like somewhat of a celebrity for getting the picture as birders lined up to check it out and commented on it. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, which is what much of birding is about.
As it turned out, it was one of two Townsend's solitaires reported that day. DeWitt saw one at her feeder in the morning, prompting an ongoing debate about whether it was the same bird or two different birds, since she lives only a few miles away.
As the count coordinators rattled off the list of birds they and other counters had seen in their areas, different finds - five black-billed magpies and two American robins on Chena Ridge, three dark-eyed juncos in the Steese/Wainwright area, a northern hawk owl in West Goldstream - drew oohs and ahhs from the crowd.
This year's count turned out to be one of the best ever in terms of different species spotted - 29. Not only was it the first time a Townsend's solitaire was seen on count day, it also marked first-ever sightings for peregrine falcons and Barrow's goldeneyes.
Ken Russell and Laurel Devaney, longtime count coordinators for the South Fairbanks area, were responsible for both those finds.
They saw a lone peregrine, along with a northern goshawk, investigating the all-you-can-eat mallard buffet at Pioneer Park, where they counted a record-high 325 mallards this year.
"I'm sure they're eating ducks," Devaney said of the two raptors.
They spotted a single Barrow's goldeneye, accompanied by four common goldeneyes, in the Chena River between Pioneer Park and the Carlson Center, a discovery that drew a "wow" from the crowd.
"That was a real surprise," said Russell.
Devaney and Russell have been participating in the Fairbanks count for the past 15 years and helped organize counts in south Texas and south Florida before moving here. They like the camaraderie and competition the count breeds among birders.
"It's always great to get together at this time of year when people don't go birding and go out and look for cool stuff," said Devaney, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In terms of total numbers, 42 field parties and 26 feeder watchers counted a total of 5,834 birds, the lowest total count since 1999 when 4,302 birds were counted.
Count compiler Gail Mayo attributes the lower overall number to the lack of redpolls. This year's count tallied only abut 1,500 redpolls, down almost 5,000 from last year.
Field observers covered more than 550 miles, mostly (444 miles) by car but also on foot, skis, snowshoes, bicycles and even dog teams. Counters put in a total of 184 hours of counting, almost eight days worth.
In addition, two other species - a bald eagle and boreal owl - were added during the count week, which is comprised of the three days prior to and three days following the count day. It marked the first time a bald eagle has been reported on count day or in count week.
"It was a good, successful bird count," reported count compiler Gail Mayo, who personally racked up sightings of an American robin and a 3-toed woodpecker as count coordinator the University area.
As for my fleeting birding fame, it felt good to be a part of the nest, even if it was only for a day.