Warm weather has made this winter one of the weirdest Great Backyard Bird Counts in the event’s history.
Bird Studies Canada released the results of this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count on March 21. The event, which had volunteers count birds in their backyards from Feb. 17 to 20, aims to track winter bird migrations throughout North America.
This was the most unusual winter yet in the count’s 15-year history, said Kerrie Wilcox, who co-ordinates the event for Bird Studies Canada. “A lot of the lakes that usually freeze up stayed open all winter,” she noted, and there was little snow in many parts of the continent.
The result was a huge number of strange birds in weird places. Canadian watchers spotted some 428 snowy owls during the count, or about four times the amount detected last year — part of a massive irruption of snowy owls across the continent. Ornithologists suspect that a shortage of lemmings up north may have driven the birds south in search of food, Wilcox said.
Snowy owls usually stay north of the border, noted St. Albert Christmas Bird Count co-ordinator Alan Hingston, but went deep into the U.S. this winter. St. Albert was actually a bit short on snowy owls this winter, with just four showing up for the Christmas count.
Watchers also spotted redpolls ranging far outside their normal neighbourhoods, Wilcox said. Whereas redpolls usually stay north of Oregon at this time of year, a few were spotted in California during this year’s count.
Canadians saw about 2.4 times more Eurasian collared doves this year than last, according to the results. These birds, a pair of which were spotted during St. Albert’s Christmas count for the first time on record, have been moving north from where they were released in the Bahamas since about 1980.
Southern Canada saw significantly more overwintering ducks and coots during this year’s count due to unfrozen lakes, the results suggest. The Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri had about two million snow geese drop by, while Ruskin, Fla., was besieged by a million tree swallows.
Reports suggest many birds have started their spring migration early this year, Hingston said.
“I hear there were 200 Canada geese down by the soccer fields this afternoon,” he said on March 21 – an unusually high number for this time of year – and many American crows have also returned ahead of schedule. “It’s possible things are going to run a week or two early this year.”
Visit http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/canada/science-stories/2012Summary/ for more on the backyard bird count.
An Edmonton scientist is looking for volunteers to keep an eye out for spring.
University of Alberta plant ecologist Elisabeth Beaubien is seeking volunteers for the Alberta PlantWatch program. The project has local volunteers track when certain plants bloom in spring each year in order to monitor the effects of climate change.
“We’re seeing a real trend toward earlier bloom and a trend towards warmer winters,” Beaubien said, “especially this winter.” PlantWatch records suggest that prairie crocus and aspen poplars around Edmonton now bloom about two weeks earlier than they did 70 years ago. That’s significant, she said, as a lot of birds and insects depend on plants blooming at specific times to survive.
St. Albert residents can expect to see aspen poplars blooming early next month, said Rayma Peterson, who has monitored them for PlantWatch here for 12 years, followed by dandelions. Saskatoons and chokecherries generally flower in early May.
It’s fun to track these plants, Peterson said, as they generally bloom in the same order each year. “You’re watching the spring unfold.”
Call Beaubien at 780-492-2540 for more on the program.
