Christmas Bird Count 2024
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Another year, another Christmas Bird Count goes in the books.
Regular readers of our Creek 53 Notebook pages may recall an entry last year concerning the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). For those needing a refresher course on the origins of this community science initiative, as well as last year’s results, you can find it here.
As its overall goal, the Christmas Bird Count seeks to obtain a snapshot of avian life across a wide swath of North America and beyond. A map showing the positions of the numerous 24 km diameter circles representing all the individual counts can be seen at this website.
Creek 53 lands and their surrounding areas fall within the Hudson CBC circle and have been an integral part of the territory covered by Team 5 for many decades. Long term trends are of most interest to the professional ornithologists studying the accumulated data, but year to year differences can be fascinating in their own right. So, what accounts for these sometimes large annual variations? Let’s have a look.
Obviously, “Lady Luck” plays some part in these changes. Being in the right place at the right time is a mantra for birders everywhere. A Great-horned Owl hooting in a dusky woodlot or a Ruffed Grouse hiding high in a conifer tree will not make the count if no one is nearby to see or hear them.
Weather conditions leading up to count day can play an even larger role. As an example, temperatures in 2024 were cold enough on average that the Ottawa River was completely frozen by count day. The opposite was true in 2023 with almost no ice present (an anomaly or the inexorable march of climate change?) Conditions on the actual count day are just as important as the event is rarely postponed except in the case of extremely dangerous conditions. Amount and type of precipitation, wind speed, fog and temperature all affect whether birds are active and if they can be observed.
Food availability is another important factor in determining bird distribution especially in winter when many individuals are living on the very edge of survival. Some people mistakenly believe that trees and shrubs produce the same quantity of seeds, cones or berries year in and year out. Evolution has dictated otherwise. Many plant species have irregular cycles of boom and bust. Poor production years which limit the number of herbivores feeding on them are followed by high production years that ensure some seeds will survive to germinate and grow. Interestingly some of these plant species synchronize their cycles over very large swaths of territory. So, common sense would seem to suggest that years with heavy food production locally should result in many bird species being observed the following winter. It is not quite so simple. Many of the “target” species which birders love to see in winter are members of a group informally called winter finches…grosbeaks, crossbills, redpolls, siskins etc…. Equally sought after are Bohemian Waxwings, those beautiful, sleek berry eaters sometimes visible in flocks of 100 or more in winter. All these species dwell in the boreal forest where seed, cone and berry cycles can be extreme. In years of high production, they may choose to remain near their breeding territories. Contrastingly, low food production can mean “irruption” years where tens of thousands of individual birds are on the move although this displacement can sometimes be in an east-west direction rather than along traditional north-south migration routes. Predicting these movements is a difficult science requiring data on food production from all over the north, but some people make the effort. Readers wanting a more in depth look at what is involved in these forecasts should check this website.
Similar situations may occur when observing raptors such as hawks and owls. Species which feed on other birds will go where those numbers are greatest. Those which prey on small mammals are dependent on the population cycles of mice, lemmings and voles which can be boom and bust just like plant seed production.
So, what did all this mean for Team 5’s results this year for the Creek 53 area in 2024?
The weather forecast for December 28th was ominous with freezing drizzle or rain predicted. Luckily it held off until mid-afternoon, but a damp northeast breeze made the -5° to -8° C temperature seem cooler. Snow covered the ground but was not deep enough to hinder walking.
And the birds? Hoped for irruptions of species from the boreal forest did not materialize. Apart from one Eastern Screech-owl, raptors also proved elusive. Frozen water bodies meant that the seven species of gull and waterfowl observed in 2023 did not reappear. In the end we tallied only 19 species compared with last year’s 31 but not for lack of effort. In all, the team covered 12.6 km on foot and 3.6 km by car over a period of 8.5 hours. Some of that time and distance was logged looking and listening for owls in the predawn darkness. Several backyard feeder stations were also visited during the day.
Below is our complete list of 19 species along with numbers of individuals. It will not be lost on readers that having American Robins be our most numerous species in mid-winter is somewhat strange. Long viewed as a harbinger of spring, more and more individuals of this species seem to be spending the colder months in our area.
Birders are always optimistic so hope springs eternal as to which of our avian friends may make an appearance during the 2025 Christmas Bird Count. Creek 53 and its surrounding areas provide a wide variety of habitats so just about anything is possible. We are already looking forward to the challenge.
Here are the results for 2024:
- 20 Wild Turkey
- 1 Ruffed Grouse
- 1 Mourning Dove
- 1 Eastern Screech-owl
- 6 Downy Woodpecker
- 4 Hairy Woodpecker
- 2 Pileated Woodpecker
- 1 Northern Shrike
- 15 Blue Jay / Geai bleu
- 4 American Crow
- 3 Common Raven
- 46 Black-capped Chickadee
- 11 White-breasted Nuthatch
- 8 European Starling
- 75 American Robin
- 14 American Goldfinch
- 6 American Tree Sparrrow
- 10 Dark-eyed Junco
- 4 Northern Cardinal
Wayne Grubert
Jean Coté
Team 5 - Hudson Christmas Bird Count
Curious about the list order? Birders will recognize that it follows the order used by eBird, which closely follows the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World, a widely accepted taxonomic reference. It puts the oldest (evolutionary-wise) species first. As DNA studies reveal new relationships -- for example, Falcons were considered raptors but are now believed to be more closely related to parrots of all things -- the list order changes.