Birders and nature enthusiasts in Grand Forks will join birders across the western hemisphere and participate in North America’s longest-running wintertime birding tradition, the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC), held on Dec. 17 in Grand Forks.
This year, over 2,200 individual counts are scheduled to take place throughout the Americas and beyond from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5.
“Each CBC volunteer observer is an important contributor, helping to shape the overall direction of bird conservation,” says Dick Cannings, the Bird Studies Canada Christmas Bird Count co-ordinator.
“Bird Studies Canada and our partners at Audubon rely on data from the CBC database to inform a myriad of analyses regarding both bird conservation and climate change.”
During last year’s count, about 61 million birds were tallied in 2,215 locations by over 62,000 volunteers; the number of both locations and observers a record level of participation.
In Canada, almost 12,000 participants in 394 counts found 3.3 million birds.
The CBC began over a century ago when 27 conservationists in 25 localities, led by scientist and writer Frank Chapman, changed the course of ornithological history.
On Christmas Day in 1900, the small group posed an alternative to the “side hunt,” a Christmas day activity in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small mammals.
Instead, Chapman proposed that they identify, count, and record all the birds they saw, founding what is now considered to be the world’s most significant citizen-based conservation effort and a more than century-old institution.
Since Chapman’s retirement in 1934, new generations of observers have performed the modern-day count.
Today, over 60,000 volunteers from all 50 states, every Canadian province, parts of Central and South America, Bermuda, the West Indies, and Pacific Islands, count and record every individual bird and bird species seen in a specified area.
The 112th CBC is expected to be larger than ever, expanding its geographical coverage and accumulating information about the winter distributions of various birds.
The CBC is vital in monitoring the status of resident and migratory birds across the Western Hemisphere, and the data, which are 100 per cent volunteer generated, have become a crucial part of Canada’s biodiversity monitoring database.
For more information about CBC participation, visit Bird Studies Canada’s website at bsc-eoc.org/volunteer/cbc and click on the “Find a Count Near You,” link on the right-hand side of the page.
If you would like to participate in the Grand Forks CBC, please contact the Granby Wilderness Society at info@granbywilderness.ca or call Jenny 250-442-7969 or Eva 250-442-5334.
Visit granbywilderness.ca for more information about our local count.
– Submitted by Dick Cannings
