Birders embark on annual count in Riding Mountain

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This article was published 24/12/2022 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RIDING MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK — Deep, powdery snow crunches underfoot as Tim Town and I snowshoe along the Bead Lakes Trail beneath a gloriously blue December sky.

It’s a balmy -26 C, but the cold weather is hardly noticed as you move your bones along the winding trail, straining to hear a faint bird call and watching for any sign of movement in the tall, snowy pines that surround you.

It’s Tuesday, the day reserved for this year’s Christmas Bird Count at Riding Mountain National Park, and I have volunteered to join the resource conservation officer on his morning trek with borrowed snowshoes and a heavy camera.

On any given day, Bead Lakes Trail is a beautiful place to hike, with its winding curves through the heart of the forest, and views of the lakes that bear its name through the trees.

But this past week, the trail has undergone a magnificent transformation with the addition of hoar frost and heavy snow that have turned the park into a wintry wonderland, both cold and silent, with only the odd tracks of a rabbit or a mouse here and there to let you know life remains. And when you stop tramping through the snow and stand perfectly still, you may even hear your own heartbeat.

Then, the sudden flutter of wings, and a black-and-white ball of feathers cuts through the air above our heads — immediately gone, hidden in a tall fir near the lake below.

“Chickadee!” I say, pointing into the air behind Town.

“Black-capped?” Town asks, automatically looking up.

“I think so.”

Between Town and myself, we count maybe 13 bird sightings, and a few landing and wing marks in the newly fallen snow that indicate early morning grouse movements. Though the numbers around Bead Lakes were somewhat disappointing, both to Town and to my ready camera, the low numbers belie the overall scientific importance of the count itself.

The annual Christmas Bird Count has been going on around North America for more than 120 years, mainly through the auspices of volunteers who carry on the tradition.

Onanole resident and retired Parks Canada employee Ken Kingdon says the value of having a tradition go on so long is the length of the data set for scientists.

“So, what we’re doing every year, in these counts across North America — now it’s slowly expanding across the world — is counting these birds in kind of the same way every year,” said Kingdon, who has been part of dozens of bird counts during his time at Riding Mountain. “You know, people doing the same observations, and often the same people for a very long time.

“Lots of people on this bird count, for example, we’ve been counting birds for 20 or 25 years. And so what it does is provides us with a snapshot of the winter bird populations across Canada.”

Volunteers tend to search the exact same area every year, and more or less use the same kind of search effort, so there’s always the same number of people doing basically the same routes, making for reliable data from year to year.

“It kind of gives you a real baseline data of what birds are here, and how many there are.”

Here in western Manitoba, similar counts take place in Brandon, Minnedosa and Rivers. Though the Brandon and Riding Mountain bird counts are now complete, Minnedosa’s bird count is scheduled for next Wednesday and the Rivers bird count takes place on Jan. 2.

“It’s kind of built on who’s in the community, and who really wants to take on that challenge,” Kingdon said.

Town and I were among the 37 human volunteers — and one Norwegian elkhound named Runa — that spent the daylight hours scouring the skies, trees and bird feeders for feathered residents. All told, these volunteers travelled a distance of 15.1 kilometres on foot, 75 kilometres by vehicle, 30 kilometres on skis, and another 22.7 kilometres by snowshoe.

Unfortunately, the extreme cold did play a role in tamping down the number of birds that were spotted in Riding Mountain this year. In December 2021, the official records provided by Friends of Riding Mountain National Park, which organizes the annual bird count, noted 31 species and four woodpeckers of an unknown nature, totalling 1,415 bird sightings.

This year, only 22 bird species and one unknown species of woodpecker were spotted, for a total of 703 individual birds. In an email announcing the results of the count on Thursday, Friends of RMNP chief administrative officer George Hartlen dubbed this year’s count as “one of the coldest and quietest in recent years.”

“Close to the same total distance was covered and the same number of feeders observed,” Hartlen wrote, “but the extremely cold [temperatures] and snow-covered trees definitely influenced the birds seen and heard.”

To the layman, it would sound like a lot of effort to count a few birds, especially given the deep-freeze temperatures. But for volunteers and park employees like Town, it’s more than just “part of the job,” or even part of the science. It’s the natural beauty of this Manitoba park that keeps the count going.

“You know, you get the chance to get out and see the park in the winter, and it’s just like we saw today. Lots of hoar frost and a bit of snow and the frosted trees almost look like big white columns,” Town says while we talk after our four-kilometre hike. “It’s quiet, you know. There’s a few less people than you’d see in the summertime, so you kind of have so many spaces to yourself. You get to experience nature as it would be.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

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