I inherited the Bergthal Bird Count east of Highway 2 several years ago and with the support of a few committed individuals we have maintained the count in this area.
The area west of Carstairs and Didsbury presents a different habitat opportunity for resident and migratory birds during winter for the Christmas Bird Count. Consequently, I registered a new area with Bird Studies Canada (birdstudiescanada.com ) called the Blind Line Circle for the 2018 count.
Without any previous data, Bob Peel and I established a road grid that we travelled Dec. 28 to initiate the count.
Previous counts, conversations and observations suggested that rural residents with shrubs, trees and buildings with or without feeders have become more and more important to winter bird habitat.
Bob and I were not going to get a good count on species and numbers from the road count, so we dropped in on several residents on the day of the count. As hoped, most residents were sufficiently interested in the count to make observations on a given day around their residences and then pass the data on to me.
Thanks to landowner participation our count went from eight species and 100 birds to 25 species and more than 600 birds.
The Blind Line count was one of more than 1,000 conducted across Canada by volunteers on a given day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 7.
The compiled data was sent to Bird Studies Canada in a series of electronic reports by me, the compiler. The data from Canada is then sent to Audubon at Cornell University in the U.S. where it is combined with count data from the U.S., Central and South America.
Make no mistake -- this citizen science is critical to determining trends over time internationally, nationally, regionally, provincially and locally.
Since this was the 118th consecutive count, year trends have been established confirming declining species numbers, declining bird numbers in many species and an increase in a few others.
Changes in migration timing and routing have been confirmed. Regional changes due to loss of habitat from land use, fire, flood and more are ongoing.
Your observations are often confirmed locally and regionally because many others have made the same observations.
Bob and I had the help of 16 other counters this year and we can always use more counters in the field and at feeders for 2019. Contact Don at [email protected] if you are interested – there is no fee and you will receive the results!
Don James is a Carstairs resident.
