Southeast Wild: Annual bird count - A social event with a scientific purpose
This year marks the 104th anniversary of the Christmas Bird Count.
On Christmas Day 1900, 27 conservationists in 25 localities, led by ornithologist Frank Chapman, changed the course of history.
The group initiated an alternative to the traditional holiday "side hunt," in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds. Instead of hunting, the group counted the birds they saw and founded a century-old institution.
Last year, more than 55,000 volunteers from all 50 states, every Canadian province, parts of Central and South America, Bermuda, the West Indies, and Pacific islands participated in 1,981 individual Christmas Bird Counts held between Dec. 14 through Jan. 5, the official count period. Each count group had a designated circle 15 miles in diameter, about 177 square miles, where they tried to cover as much ground as possible within a 24-hour calendar day.
All summed, the counts last year recorded more than 73 million birds.
Although it has grown in popularity as a social and competitive event, the count serves an important scientific function as well. The count produces 100 percent volunteer-generated data that, over the years, has become a crucial part of the U.S. government's natural history monitoring database. It represents the longest-running ornithological database.
Birds are one of the first groups of animals to be affected by environmental threats, such as pollution and habitat destruction, and count data provide indispensable information, not only on long-term health of bird populations, but also the status of the environment that birds share with all living things.
Count data are now accessible as never before. Compilers now enter count results directly into the database via the Internet, and the 103rd count results are viewable at http://www.birdsource.org.
More exciting yet, historical count data from 1900 to the present are now available through BirdSource, a cooperative project of the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This has been a huge task and the implications are very significant. Given the ease in which data are available for research and analysis, the century-long database will surely begin to show its true worth.
Last year there were 34 Christmas Bird Counts conducted in Alaska, including 11 here in Southeast. Kodiak led all counts with 79 species on count day, next came Glacier Bay with 73, and then Juneau with 65 species. Once again, the Prudhoe Bay count tallied just one species, the common raven.
The Juneau count began in the mid-1960s and has been held annually since 1976. Last year 26 Juneau volunteers logged in 65 species and 9,523 individual birds. The most abundant species seen last year in Juneau were the mallard (1,948), pine siskin (1,222), glaucous-winged gull (1,161) and Barrow's goldeneye (503).
This year's count in Juneau will be held on the first day of the count period, Sunday, Dec. 14. Volunteers will meet no later than 8 a.m. at either McDonald's restaurant. People interested in counting in the downtown, Douglas, and North Douglas Island areas should meet at the downtown McDonald's; birders wishing to work the Lemon Creek, airport, Mendenhall Valley and Auke Bay areas should meet at the Valley location.
Volunteers need to have a binocular and bird guide, and most importantly, must prepare for almost any kind of environmental conditions. Juneau weather on Count Day can range from mild with no snow and open fresh waters to truly bone-chilling wintry weather, with everything locked in snow and ice, and Taku winds screaming across Gastineau Channel. In Southeast Alaska it is always a race with the sun, as there are only about six hours of good daylight in mid- to late December for seeking out birds.
One of the most familiar species observed and counted in Juneau is the chestnut-backed chickadee. Although there are four species of chickadees that reside year-round in Alaska, the chestnut-backed is the only regularly occurring chickadee throughout Southeast. It is a familiar species to most people because of its wide distribution, relative tameness and eager use of bird feeders.
The boreal and black-capped chickadee, both common residents throughout much of the interior of Alaska and Canada, sometimes wander over to the coast and show up in Juneau. The mountain chickadee, which is considered a vagrant anywhere in Alaska but is a rare resident of the higher country just east of us in British Columbia, also has appeared in Juneau over the years.
Summarizing the Juneau Christmas Count data for chickadees, the chestnut-backed is one of 22 species of birds that have been recorded on every Juneau count to date, with numbers ranging from 26 to 152 birds. For the other chickadees combined, there have been five counts where a black-capped, mountain, or boreal chickadee have been found, with maximum counts of three, two, and one for each species respectively. Our biggest year for vagrant chickadees in Juneau was 1989, when we located three boreal chickadees and three mountain chickadees!
This fall there have been probably more reports of black-capped chickadees in the Juneau area than ever before, so it will be interesting to see if we find any on count day. People with feeders that attract chickadees should be on the lookout and report any visits by these rare visitors from the Interior.
While our familiar chestnut-backed chickadee has chestnut brown on its back, sides and rump, the black-capped chickadee is mostly a study in black and white with black cap and bib, white cheeks and breast and a gray back. The mountain chickadee is easily distinguished by a white eyebrow and gray sides. Boreal chickadees lack the black cap of other chickadees, with a gray-brown cap, back and sides, black bib and white cheeks.
As always, there will be a potluck after the Juneau count to share in the events of the day and conduct the tally of birds and species seen. For more information on the Juneau Christmas Bird Count, call Mark Schwan at 789-9841 or Gus van Vliet at 789-5624.
• Mary Willson will present a program on protecting endangered forest birds of southcentral Chile when Juneau Audubon Society meets at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School library.