Editor: On Sunday, Jan. 3, 25 Langley Field Naturalists and friends took part in the Surrey/White Rock/Langley Christmas Bird Count.
This area is home to one of many counts in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count, held throughout North America every year since 1900.
We hit the road at 8 a.m. and organized into five teams to cover the Langley section of our count circle.
The day was very chilly with a temperature of -6 C, morning fog and hoarfrost covering the trees.
Throughout the day we marveled at the patterns made by the ice crystals on spider webs and the spectacular views of the frosty trees against the blue sky.
In these conditions we walked 54 km and drove 178.7 km to complete our count by 4 p.m.
Despite the weather, we were pleasantly surprised to see our total number of birds increase from last year’s 6,705 to 7,934, and we increased our species count from 67 to 68. This includes numbers sent in by our three enthusiastic official backyard feeder watchers.
The Langley Field Naturalists have been keeping computerized records since 2007 and this year we had two interesting events.
First, we counted record numbers of 17 of the species regularly seen on our count, including dark-eyed juncos, spotted towhees, song sparrows, barn owls, and American wigeon. Second, we had five new species never counted before on the Christmas Bird Count in this eight-year period (2008’s count was cancelled because of heavy snow): Eurasian collared doves, snow geese, killdeer, marsh wrens, and a red breasted sapsucker.
The Christmas Bird Count is an annual citizen science project for the Langley Field Naturalists that not only increases knowledge of our resident winter birds but also notes changes in their populations.
Kathy Masse,
Langley
