WINGING IT

MAT-SU — How many birds could a bird-counter count if a bird-counter could count birds?

If that counter was among the dozens of Mat-Su Valley birders who participated in last year’s annual Christmas Bird Count, the answer is nearly 5,900. As members of the Mat-Su Birders prepare for this year’s count — set for Dec. 18 in Palmer and Wasilla — the hope is to document as many species and numbers as possible, said Bob Winckler, Mat-Su Birders president.

It’s a time to not only coordinate with other birding enthusiasts, it’s also an important exercise in collective science.

“From a scientific standpoint, the benefit (of counts) is to see what the populations are doing,” Winckler said. “From a personal standpoint, people are looking for something unusual. We usually get a pretty good count on bald eagles, primarily from the Palmer landfill.”

Those unusual sightings last year included a golden-crowned sparrow, a new species for the Mat-Su Christmas Bird Count.

“They’re quite a common bird in the summer, but you don’t see them often in the winter,” Winckler said.

The same is true for the count’s lone song sparrow, which has been sighted the past four years, Winckler said. That streak is likely to come to and end, however, as the sparrow was caught in a trap.

“Unfortunately, at the beginning of this season, the bird may have had an accident, so we will not have a song sparrow,” he said. “This would’ve been the fifth year in a row. What’s unusual about that (sighting) is you wouldn’t normally see them this far north. In the winter, they would not normally be expected to be seen at all.”

Those who turn out to participate in the count in the field or from their homes by their feeders, the 15-mile radius centering around the Four Corners will be bustling with birding activity Dec. 18.

They’ll likely see plenty of bohemian waxwings (2,378 were counted in 2010), black-capped chickadees (966) and mallards (726). Some of the more rare sightings for this time of year have included a single northern shrike, an American robin, one Lincoln’s sparrow and a pair of brown creepers.

Part of the 112th annual holiday count sponsored by the National Audubon Society, the effort of volunteer observers help “shape the overall direction of bird conservation,” said Geoff LeBaron, the Society’s Christmas Bird Count director. “Audubon and our partners at Bird Studies Canada and the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center rely on data from the CBC database to inform a myriad of analyses regarding both bird conservation and climate change.”

Overall, last year’s count tallied about 61 million birds in 2,215 locations by more than 62,000 volunteers, all records for the count. In the Valley, the local count has been held the past 31 years and volunteers will attempt to count every bird seen inside the boundary, Winckler said.

“It’s science on the cheap, essentially,” he said. “In Anchorage, they usually have over 100 people participate in the counts. From year in, year out, you still get a pretty good understanding about what’s going on with birds. It helps the overall knowledge base about what’s going on with birds.”

In addition to learning about what may be happening with bird populations, the counts also help show what may be happening with local climates.

“You see these birds now going north when you wouldn’t see them there at all (before),” he said. “Also, if you see a population drop, you can see if a population is in trouble somewhere.”

Mat-Su Birders is expecting more than 40 spotters in the field and another 10 to 15 at feeders in the 15-mile radius, he said.

For more information about the Christmas Bird Count or how to participate, contact Winckler at msbirder@mtaonline.net.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.