For my non-birding friends, these counts are the ultimate "Citizen Science". Bird counts originated with "Christmas Counts", something that came out of the hunting world. In the late 19th Century, hunters would stage competitions during the Christmas season to see who could bag the most fowl. As conservation started to enter the picture, those old hunting parties turned into counts. Citizen volunteers would gather to count birds - both in terms of species and numbers of each species observed - and ornithologists would use the information to do analyses of trends of bird populations and such.
In Colorado, the Denver Field Ornithologists ("DFO") added a Fall count to the mix in 1979, and followed that up with a Spring count the following year. Denver Audubon started cosponsoring the counts in the 1990s. The counts are held annually at 8 separate locations (these locations remain fixed to provide valid comparisons), and both bird species and overall numbers are counted. The counts serve to provide information about bird populations in Colorado during peak migration times; the sponsoring organizations then draw on this information in their work in conservation and research and all the other good stuff they do. The species count has varied from a low of 140 to a high of 173 (that low year was when the counters didn't have access to one of the 8 sites). The number of individual birds has varied from a low of 8,358 to a high of 56,697 (that high number included 26,038 European Starlings alone! Even without the Starlings, the 33,659 tops all counts). Averages for these numbers are 158 and 15,509.
Folks, those are a lot of species and a lot of birds, and it seems like a great cause that needs a lot of eyes and fingers and toes to get through. And that's why I convince myself to get up once again at oh-dark-thirty even though I desperately want to sleep in. Apparently, I desperately want to check off this requirement even more.
In Colorado, the Denver Field Ornithologists ("DFO") added a Fall count to the mix in 1979, and followed that up with a Spring count the following year. Denver Audubon started cosponsoring the counts in the 1990s. The counts are held annually at 8 separate locations (these locations remain fixed to provide valid comparisons), and both bird species and overall numbers are counted. The counts serve to provide information about bird populations in Colorado during peak migration times; the sponsoring organizations then draw on this information in their work in conservation and research and all the other good stuff they do. The species count has varied from a low of 140 to a high of 173 (that low year was when the counters didn't have access to one of the 8 sites). The number of individual birds has varied from a low of 8,358 to a high of 56,697 (that high number included 26,038 European Starlings alone! Even without the Starlings, the 33,659 tops all counts). Averages for these numbers are 158 and 15,509.
Folks, those are a lot of species and a lot of birds, and it seems like a great cause that needs a lot of eyes and fingers and toes to get through. And that's why I convince myself to get up once again at oh-dark-thirty even though I desperately want to sleep in. Apparently, I desperately want to check off this requirement even more.
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| Black-capped Chickadee Chatfield State Park, CO 9/14/13 |
In anticipation of the day, I've asked my mentor Tina for advice of which Fall Count to join. You see, the eight locations around Denver are all hot birding spots; how's a girl to choose? I have my choice of going to Bear Creek Lake Park, or the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, or Cherry Creek State Park, or Barr Lake State Park, or Castlewood Canyon.
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| Black-capped Chickadee Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
Or, as Tina suggests, Chatfield State Park. Very simply, she says, "Joey Kellner leads that count, and with Joey, you'll see a lot of birds". Her second choice is Bear Creek Lake Park, the place I've kind of had in my mental sights, largely because it's the scheduled sight of our first Field Test, something coming up in just another week. Her reasoning is much the same: a good chance to preview the test bed, and there will be birds there, too.
What we don't talk about is something we don't know about until later in the week: the entire Fall Bird Count is at risk because of the monsoon rains and resultant flooding in Colorado.
Oh, hadn't I mentioned that? It started raining sometime Monday night. And. It. Never. Stopped.
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| American Goldfinch Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
I've lived in Colorado for most of my adult life, starting in 1981. I've not seen anything like this. It's not like Katrina in New Orleans, or the Japan tsunami: there is no one major catastrophic event, like a hurricane or an earthquake. It. Just. Plain. Rains. And rains. For days on end.
Late in the week, the word comes out: the count at this location is canceled, or the count at that location is on, this other one is an hour-by-hour decision.
Chatfield is on. Never any question - although I am incredulous that there isn't flooding there. It makes the decision pretty easy, and so I head down to Chatfield in the wee dark hours of September 14th. I get there plenty early, expecting a throng of people. Joey Kellner is there to greet us all. What surprises me is that there are only about a dozen of us gathered for the count; I expected a huge group. What I don't know yet is that the people congregated here represent a huge and vast knowledge of birds.
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| Mountain Chickadee Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
What I do know is that Joey immediately asks who plans to stay for the full monty: an entire day of counting birds. Now, I've only met the man once before, and briefly, but his reputation precedes him: he goes from sunup to sundown and doesn't miss a chance to see a bird.
I figure that if I'm in for part of the day, I might as well be in for the whole thing. I raise my hand for the full monty.
Only two others indicate a willingness to stick it out - another surprise to me (or should it be a warning) - but I'm okay with that. Those of us going all day are invited to ride with Joey. Jill and Randy, the others in our select group, place themselves in the back seat.
Whoa. I'm riding shotgun with a legend. This might be cool.
And it is cool. We head out, and immediately everyone is calling out birds, and Joey is recording. He uses a smartphone app called "BirdLog", something I have access to (gratus!) through the AMB program, but haven't used yet. An hour or two into the day, I know I need to get the app, because I'm trying desperately to record the birds we're seeing on my little pink notebook, and I'm falling woefully behind.
We see birds. And more birds. And yet more. We count American White Pelicans, and Great Blue Herons (I've never seen so many in one place), and Canada Geese. We see Common Ravens and American Crows. At the lakefront, we see Ring-billed Gulls and Western Grebes and a handful of American Coots. To my delight, we see several Black Terns and a single Forsters Tern and a few Common Terns: these are not birds I've seen much - if at all - in Colorado.
We move from one location to another, and count birds along the way. A whole bunch of Black-billed Magpies along the way, as expected. Riding shotgun, I'm amazed at how much I can spot; in my AMB field trips, I've somehow just ended up in the back seat most frequently, and today I feel like I'm seeing the world anew. And I call out the birds I see: Raptor! Joey stops so we can get a look: a Red-tailed Hawk. My next "Raptor!" results in another pull-off and an adjudication of Swainson's Hawk. Everyone in the car agrees, and when I ask how they can tell by this view - just the bird's back - I get a great explanation and a field guide handed to me to examine the drawing.
What a fabulous learning experience.
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| Rock Wren Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
The dozen or so of us spend a few hours walking upstream (or is it downstream? I can never keep the two straight) along the South Platte from the Kingfisher Bridge, and we find all kinds of bird life. I become increasingly aware of the caliber of birders I'm with today. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite ever field trips: the birders are focused, educated, skilled, respectful. People listen and watch; it's all about the birds. People are also eager and willing to share. On this walk, we see Black-capped Chickadees and one lone Mountain Chickadee; we see Gray Catbirds and American Goldfinches and Lesser Goldfinches and House Wrens and White-breasted Nuthatches and Wilson's Warblers and House Finches. The list is growing and growing and growing. When I can't see a bird, or can't recognize a call, there is always someone nearby to help me out. It's amazing.
The day wears on, and our list is pretty impressive. We go here; we go there. We see several Rock Wrens: a bird that I've only seen once before, but today I get lots of good looks at. I also get lots of photos, something I've not been working on, since our pace has just been incredible. But the Rock Wrens: oh yes. My. Cool birds.
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| Rock Wren Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
Eventually we stop for lunch, and, surprisingly to me, we lose almost the entire rest of the group. In the end, we have just this little foursome to take us through the rest of the day.
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| Milk Snake Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
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| Gayflower (Liatris punctata) Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
By late afternoon, we're revisiting places we're been before to try to pick up new species. Joey says that he normally gets 90+ birds on the fall count, but we're shy of that and working mightily to get there.
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| Lark Sparrow Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
We go back to the South Platte, planning to walk along the western side; in the morning our walk was on the opposite side of the river. Just as we pull into a parking lot at the gravel pits, I spot a raptor soaring high above us and call it out. Heck, I may not know the birds I'm pointing out, but I think I'm earning my keep by doing a half-decent job of spotting. We all get out of the car, and the others are immediately on the bird: we watch as this Osprey stops to hover directly above the little pond at our side, and then dives straight down and comes up with a fish.
It feels like we just scored a touchdown. This is our first new bird in quite a while, and not only that, but what a display. We all whoop and holler like we did score a touchdown. We high five each other.
This is what it's all about.
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| Plumbeous Vireo Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
Our walk along the river yields one more new species for the day, a Plumbeous Vireo. We're starting to lose the light, so we hurry to retrace our steps to yet a few more recheck places. Once again, I call out "raptor!" wishing that I could do better than that, but happy that I can make a small contribution. Joey stops to look through binoculars, and then we circle back again to make sure we all have a chance to see this bird, because, quite frankly, I've spotted something really special: a Merlin. I've only seen one of these birds before, in Alaska, before I knew I was becoming a birder. Joey says that it's early for them to arrive, and he's only seen them once or twice before on a fall bird count.
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| Merlin Chatfield State Park 9/14/13 |
It's getting dark, and it's hard to get a decent photo of the bird, but it perches there on the fence for us for longer than we can legally sit on the side of the road. I snap photo after photo, knowing they won't do this regal creature justice, but wanting to capture this magical moment.
It's 7 p.m. when we declare it too dark to go any longer; we've been at this 12 and a half hours. Our group counted 88 species of birds, for a total of 1,211 total individual birds.
But really, in the end, it's not at all about the numbers. It's about the birds, and how on this day, I got some of that magic back.
(Credits: thanks to Hugh Kingery for the background on the fall counts in Colorado!)
But really, in the end, it's not at all about the numbers. It's about the birds, and how on this day, I got some of that magic back.
(Credits: thanks to Hugh Kingery for the background on the fall counts in Colorado!)
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