I spy… a pine grosbeak

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This article was published 02/01/2025 (259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ONANOLE – Powder kicks up from the back of Ken Kingdon’s snowshoes as he blazes a trail across a wide-open, frozen lake. He points to a bird flying through the valley in front of him.

“I’ll write that down later,” he says.

Three kilometres pass under the snowshoes before Kingdon says he has counted 13 birds. At the end of the hike, he’s spotted a white-tail deer, a fist-sized hole carved by a woodpecker and a beaver lodge resting under a blanket of snow.

It’s not NASCAR, but this sport has its excitement.

“If you’re not a birder, it sounds a little goofy,” Kingdon told the Sun. “But where we find fun is when we see a new species. If we see a sharptail grouse, that’s kind-of bragging rights.”

Kingdon is one of about 30 birders in the Onanole-Riding Mountain-Wasagaming area that took to the bush on Dec. 17 for the annual Christmas Bird Count. It’s a game where locals find as many birds as possible in a 24-hour period.

The local count covered a 6-mile (10-kilometre) radius centered on the old fire hall in Wasagaming, Kingdon told the Sun. Each person was assigned different parts of the area with the goal of estimating bird populations throughout.

It’s a tradition that has turned into “citizen science,” he said. The bird count is a sporting activity similar to hunting, but the game is now widespread and organized enough that annual counts from citizens are used for research purposes.

“You can see trends in birds,” Kingdon said. “All (of) the sudden one bird shows up on your checklist, and you know it wasn’t there 20 years ago.”

With 30 participants, Kingdon’s community near Riding Mountain Park is enthusiastic about the count. But that doesn’t stop in Onanole — the passion has taken flight in Westman.

“It’s honestly part of my Christmas tradition,” said Erica Alex, who grew up with the Christmas count in Westman.

Now she’s the organizer of the 2024 Minnedosa count, pulling some strings to make sure the dates line-up with her seasonal break from university. Scheduled for Dec. 28, she said the count “is set so that I can be there,” after her trip home for the holidays from the University of Saskatchewan.

Alex did a Christmas count for the very first time at the age of 9, and has partnered with Kingdon before. She said after taking to it, she spent the Christmas holidays of her youth traveling from Minnedosa to Brandon and Riding Mountain to participate in the several Christmas counts that take place each year.

“It’s fun just doing it, whether we see things or not,” she told the Sun. “That’s a part of birding that’s built in: Nothing’s guaranteed, and maybe being surprised by the things that you do find.”

Alex has now worked four summers with agencies like Birds Canada and the federal government, and is set to graduate with a degree in environmental science in 2025. She has aspirations to make a career of it, she said, and that stemmed from her experience as a kid.

”The Christmas Bird Count was a pretty big inspiration,” she said. “That’s what led me here.”

Ian Thorleifson, a resident in Onanole, has participated in counts for the past 22 years. It is a small world of birding, as he said he remembers Alex when she was a “little pipsqueak redhead” at the age of 9, taking a “surprising” interest in the sport.

The camaraderie and the community, said all three birders who spoke with the Sun, is a big part of the event.

Speaking of the 2024 count, Thorleifson said he was particularly excited about seeing a Brown creeper in the Onanole area as the birds are incredible elusive. (As Friends of Kananaskis Country wrote on its website about the species, “When frightened, they flatten themselves against a tree and stop moving, becoming almost invisible.”)

“It is fun in so many ways,” said Thorleifson. “The comraderie with the people you get to know, and the appreciation of the birds and the abilities and their behaviours. To me, its just one of the more enjoyable ways you can spend a day.”

While the Onanole count took place on Dec. 17, the Minnedosa count was scheduled after press time. Last year the group saw 1,500 birds across 27 species, said Alex.

The local counts have taken place in Westman for more than 40 years.

Kingdon told the Sun from his yard, with birds coming and going from the feeder, that he had seen 12 species and expected to see about 150 individual birds that day. Kingdon had spent four hours snowshoeing that day, across nine kilometres.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com