Nature lovers continue Minnedosa bird count

MINNEDOSA – The quaint holiday tradition of a Christmas Bird Count lived for another year in Minnedosa on Saturday thanks to a dedicated group of roughly 10 people who are passionate about wildlife.

The group of birders from Westman spent the day from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. searching an area in a circle 7.5 kilometres around the Minnedosa Dam to identify as many birds as possible. Erica Alex, a 23-year-old environmental biology student, hosted the count.

“I really enjoy doing it,” she told the Sun from the streets of Minnedosa. “I’ve been doing it so long that it’s just tradition for me. It’s also a really good chance to see the people around here that I grew up birding with.”

Alex has organized the Minnedosa hobby-sport-tradition event since she was 12. At that age, she sent emails to people to ensure the event would continue when the previous organizer moved out of town.

Now, as a university student, she continues each year to send out messages from Saskatchewan and arranges the count for when she comes home to Minnedosa for the holidays.

The crowd this year came mostly from outside Minnedosa, with some birders from Onanole, Brandon and Erickson. So it goes with many bird counts in Westman, as a small community of birders ensures the Christmas tradition lives on.

“I haven’t missed a year in 36 years,” said Buzz Crowston, a retired park naturalist, who had binoculars and a camera hanging from his neck. While he ate lunch, he showed a cellphone app where he had tallied the morning’s count of more than 30 spotted.

Crowston had tracked 32 kilometres of travel, mostly by vehicle. He was one of the group assigned to cover areas of Minnedosa, which will later be added up together to give a picture of winter bird populations across the region.

Duane Diehl, who wore a “Bird Nerd” shirt in the style of the periodic table of elements, told the Sun he had attended multiple counts all over Westman this year. The tradition had taken him already to Brandon, Cypress River and Rivers before he got to Minnedosa.

The hobby has flared up in the past eight years, he said.

“I can walk, I can drive, I can get outside,” he said. “I have other hobbies: I woodwork, I collect stamps — but this gets me out of the house.

“I’ve always been interested in nature.”

Hanna Popp, who grew up on a farm in Erickson, said she can identify many species by eye now without the help of a cellphone app that she keeps installed on her device. She does the Christmas Bird Count every year, whether she’s in town, or in Saskatchewan where she now lives.

“It just adds an element to going outside for a walk,” she said. Asked what brings her back, she said, “The challenge of knowing what’s out there. I think I just like ID, it’s an addiction honestly.”

The 23-year-old showed an app where she had posted to an online map a total of 1,227 observations of wildlife she encountered in the world. When asked how she got into the hobby, she said it came from natural beginnings.

“I think growing up on a farm helps with being curious about the things around you.”

In a 30-minute walk in the afternoon, she and Alex spotted 30 house sparrows, four chickadees and a nuthatch. The trophy sight for her on Saturday would have been a turkey, if she saw one, but had no such luck as of the afternoon.

Other members had their sights set on a gyrfalcon, and a snowy owl.

There are some new faces over time, but normally its a crowd of the usual suspects who return each year to do the count, Alex said. She has known some members for the better part of her life, having joined the Christmas Bird Count when she was nine years old.

Alex has now worked several summers with agencies like Birds Canada and the federal government doing research. She is currently working as a co-op student with the Canadian Wildlife Service and working on a bachelor of science in environmental biology.

The student will round up all the sightings from her group members this season, tally it and submit the information to the national Christmas Bird Count data. The information is gathered from across Canada in bird counts like the ones that take place in Westman, and helps track trends in bird populations among other details.

»cmcdowell@brandonsun.com