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What’s flying: Rarities always make bird count special

A female Northern cardinal looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.” – Gertrude Stein

With the end of each year comes moments to contemplate, to recount the adventures of the year and for birders count the number of birds seen, the new birds seen for the first time in the past year.

Counting was the subject of one of the biggest international news stories this year as estimates of worldwide bird populations was estimated to have dropped by 2.9 billion birds, one in four birds, since 1970 https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back#:~:targetText=The%20first%2Dever%20comprehensive%20assessment,among%20birds%20in%20every%20biome.

Birders in the Upper Peninsula have noticed extreme declines in many species seen here like common nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, swallows, chimney swifts and others. Some disappearances seem inexplicable, but many causes are being blamed – climate change, loss of habitat due to agriculture, continued use of a variety of pesticides, not only in developing countries, but even here in lawn care and other less obvious places, predation by domestic cats, collisions with skyscrapers and other manmade structures, shoreline loss from rising lake and ocean levels and development. The list is extensive!

In attempts to continue monitoring bird populations, citizen science efforts like spring migration counts, Cornell’s Great Backyard Bird Count in February and the upcoming Audubon Christmas Bird Counts (CBC’s) will continue to provide important information regarding trends in bird numbers.

CBC’s are conducted between the two weeks before and after Christmas around the world. The first CBC was in 1900 to create an alternative outdoor activity to stand against hunting contests held during the holidays to see who could shoot the most birds, mostly along the Atlantic Coast. Today’s CBC’s involve sending volunteers out into a count circle with a 7.5-mile radius for a 24-hour period to count every single species and individual bird seen in the area during that time. Marquette’s CBC, the 72nd, is tomorrow, with some birders out looking for owls before dawn. Most counters will begin at 8 a.m. after meeting at Mattson Park down town to join a count team. The Marquette circle is centered at the Old City Hall on Washington Street.

The initial area identified the Lake Superior shoreline as a prime area to include gulls, grebes, loons, ducks and geese in keeping with open water. One or two counters may spend the entire day looking for these species from Harvey to Middle Island Point. The entire count area extends north to Harlow Lake and Sugarloaf on the north, west to Negaunee Township, and south to just south of Co. Rd. 480. It is an area of great diversity. In the early years, many of the birders caravaned together from Mattson Park, then just a loading dock, to the Dead River, to the MiDNR Cherry Creek Road, then a set of open tanks and a pond where great blue herons and kingfishers could be found, even in winter. After lunch, most counters went home leaving just a few to check locations like Tourist and Presque Isle Parks. County Road 550, Harlow Lake and other points north. Today the area gets covered much more thoroughly, with counters working through predawn hours until after dark.

Besides field counters, many counts also rely on feeder counters, birders staying home to watch bird feeders throughout the day. This method picks up a number of newer birds for the count in Marquette, like northern cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers and house finches, not seen on most of the early records. Their reports from the circle will be added to the totals of the field counters. The Marquette CBC hopes for a species total of 50 species or more for a good count, but bad visibility and extremely cold conditions hamper counters, and rarities, accessibility, rarities and filled feeders all affect the final totals.

The big snowstorm last Sunday left many birders wondering how some recent visitors fared. A northern hawk owl had been hunting in the old Marquette city composting area off Lakeshore Blvd. in north Marquette since Nov. 19 before the biggest storm hammered the Lake Superior shoreline. The owl was not reported again until four days after the storm on Dec. 5 at the same area. It has not been reported since, but birders hope it will reappear somewhere in town tomorrow.

In Munising a mountain bluebird was found near the mouth of the Anna River beginning on Nov. 25 and it too seemed to disappear after the storm. However, it did reappear on Dec. 7 and was seen for a number of days thereafter.

A number of new birds also appeared surprising birders across the central U.P. Several new common grackles appeared in at least three locations including one south of Wallace in Delta County, one in Chassell in Houghton Co., and one, possibility two along the Dead River in Marquette. There have been several other sightings of common grackles in the past few weeks in the area, all really late reports for them.

In Grand Marais there was a report of two robins and a flock of cedar waxwings in town. While most robins and cedar waxwings migrate south in the fall, a few hardy individuals do stick around for at least part of most winters, usually near a large source of food like mountain ash or crab apple fruits. Rarities like these will make CBC most exciting. For more check https://audubon.maps.arcgis.com/ apps/View/index.html?appid=ac275eeb01434cedb1c5dcd0fd3fc7b4

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is a teacher at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette and a freelance photographer.

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