The 125-year-old Christmas Bird Count is back, and local birders are poised to take flight and make their census.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteer avian aficionados will take to the roads and trails across southern Ontario over the next couple weeks to gather data on bird populations in their communities. Dozens of such would-be scientists will do the same in Halton Hills and northern Milton on Dec. 27.
Last year’s census results showed a massive drop in bird populations - something that may have been caused by more transient factors.
“It was mainly due to the weather and the effect it has on birds,” Halton North Peel Naturalist Club member and local bird count lead Ian Jarvie said.
“And also visibility. You might be able to see a small bird through the fog and the rain 20 feet away, but to see a red-tailed hawk, or something like that, 500 metres away is just impossible.”
The bird count was started on Christmas Day in the year 1900 by American ornithologist Frank M. Chapman in response to people going on “side hunts.” These were competitive hunts during the holidays where teams, or “sides,” tried to see who could produce a larger amount of quarry.
Chapman was appalled by the decimation of bird populations, leading him to form the Christmas Bird Count. The US-based National Audobon Society – which shares its name with famed American ornithologist John James Audobon – soon adopted the count.
Birds Canada manages the count nationally. Ontario Nature oversees everything in the province and the Halton North Peel Naturalist Club does the count itself locally. The raw data they gather is made available to the scientific community, providing them with information to write reports on bird populations.
Conservation Science Manager for Ontario Nature Jenna Quinn says they work with 150 local groups that act as a “voice for nature in their community.”
“These are really needed groups. We're always going to need people that are speaking up for nature and advocating for smart science solutions to the problems that we're facing,” Quinn elaborated.
The federal government’s State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report paints a picture of a population in crisis. Three bird groups – waterfowls, wetland birds and birds of prey – have been growing in population since 1970. However, five of them – long-distance migrants, Arctic birds, aerial insectivores, shorebirds and grassland birds – declined in the same time period.
The population hit the hardest is the grassland birds, which have seen a decrease of 67 per cent. Arctic birds' numbers had the smallest rate of deterioration in the study at 28 per cent.
“Habitat loss is one of the largest causes of decline that we see in birds across all species groups. (There's) habitat loss as a direct result of urbanization and development, but also habitats get spread apart, they get fragmented from one another, or their quality is lessened because they are surrounded by development and urbanization,” Quinn said.
Statistics provided by Jarvie indicate that north Halton numbers have shown a lot of variability in Christmas Bird Counts since 1991, with peaks and valleys throughout. But overall, there does appear to be a gradual downward trend.
The highest number clocked by the counters locally was in 2011, standing at 15,507. The average number of birds documented between 2011 and 2020 stood at 8,023. Within the same timespan in the previous decade, between the years 2000 and 2010, the average number of birds was 9,007.
Jarvie says that the north Halton group is good for volunteers, but doesn’t want to discourage anyone from taking an interest in the count. He asks hopefuls to email him first and ask if more are needed ([email protected]).
Last year’s count results are available in the Halton North Peel Naturalist Club's newsletter. More information about the bird count is available on Ontario Nature’s website.