Christmas Bird Count

Get comfy in the warmth of your own home and count birds in your yard for at least 15 minutes. Count all birds that you can confidently identify. It is important to note that 1 bird could return to your yard to feed several times during your count. It is therefore best to count the highest number of birds of 1 species that you see at one time in your yard and at your feeders. This will help prevent recounting that 1 chickadee that visited your feeders 10 times in one morning. Record the total time you spent counting birds. Report your time, species list and numbers to your count coordinator.

Get dressed up in your warmest gear to head out for a couple hours or more of birding on foot. Bush beater volunteers coordinate efforts to ensure one area is not being double counted by two groups. You will count all birds you can confidently identify plus the number of people in your group, how far you travelled in a vehicle and on foot, and how long you counted birds for. Report these numbers plus your species list and numbers to your count coordinator.

Owl prowlers are a special kind of winter birder. They work in the dark from midnight to dawn, and from sunset to midnight on bird count day. Their objective is to locate and count owls that are hard to find in the daytime. Owl calls are played from ‘ghetto blasters’ or more refined digital speakers for a few minutes at forested areas such as in river valleys and woodlots. The speakers from cell phones are not loud enough and need to be supplemented with a blue-tooth speaker. Owl calls should start with smaller species, Saw-whet followed by the larger owls, Great Horned and Barred. A Boreal call could be added in the middle by any optimists. The length of playback need be only 30 seconds with a 3-minute wait for a response. If you are owl prowling be sure to let the relevant zone captains know. Too many owl prowlers could result in playback calls being mistaken for a real owl! You will report the number of each species of owls, time spent counting, and distance travelled on foot and in the vehicle.

A rare bird form (request form from count coordinator) needs to be filled out if a rare bird is observed whether its in your yard, on the trail, or beside that owl at midnight. If possible, get a picture of the bird. Record the distinguishing features you used to identify the rare bird and how you ruled out similar species that are more common to the area. This will need to be submitted with the count results for the rare bird to be counted by Birds Canada.

First, count a small sample of the flock to get a sense of what 10 birds look like. Then use this proportion of the flock to extrapolate by tens to count the rest of the flock. If it is a flock with hundreds or thousands, this method can be scaled up to count 100 birds and then begin counting by 100s once you have a sense of what proportion of the flock 100 takes up.