Pine siskins, invasive European starlings and dark-eyed juncos were the most-recorded species of birds during Nanaimo's Christmas bird count.
The count takes place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 of each year. The volunteer-driven monitoring program has been running since 1900, after being proposed by by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman to replace the traditional Christmas side hunt.
Heidi van Vliet, biologist and Nanaimo's official bird count data compiler, called the count "North America's longest-running citizen science project."
"Some people might want to do it for tradition, I think there's some people even here in Nanaimo that have been doing it with their family for decades so it's kind of like a Christmas tradition to go out birding," van Vliet said. "Sometimes we get new volunteers just because they may be interested in it or just getting into birding."
For the day on Dec. 27, teams of volunteers scour for birds in 20 hot-spot areas no more than 24 kilometres from the Bastion.
In total this year, 99 volunteers counted 116 species on the official count day, then another four during "count week" which is the three days before and after the day. All together they tallied about 25,000 individual birds.
Pine siskins were spotted about 2,500 times, followed by the starlings about 2,100 times, then the dark-eyed juncos at about 2,000.
Last year, 88 volunteers tallied 24,662 birds, comprised of 117 species, with only 54 individual pine siskins among them. The European starlings were fourth, with about 1,400 of them spotted.
According to van Vliet, the number of pine siskins spotted fluctuates drastically from year to year.
"One year we actually had, I think, 9,000 so it's not the highest we've seen of pine siskins, but they're usually in big flocks and this year was quite a few."
Another count of note was the number of different warbler species that were recorded this year.
"They fly south for the winter but sometimes we might get one or two on a Christmas bird count, and we actually got three different species – we got orange crowned warbler, yellow rumped warbler and townsend's warbler," van Vliet said. "So that was interesting. We have a master list of expected species to see, and those warblers aren't even on the list."
Other species of interest include a snow goose, an evening grosbeak and a sanderling. One lucky spotter even took note of a western screech owl on Dec. 28, which represents the second recorded western screech owl during the entire history of Nanaimo's count.
"Sometimes people will go out at night to try to find owls so some years people are starting as early as 6 a.m.," van Vliet said. "There were also people birding in the evening looking for owls, as well."
Those interested in participating in future Christmas bird counts can e-mail heidi.vanvliet@hotmail.ca.
"Anybody can volunteer for the Christmas bird count, you don't have to be an expert birder. We try to have one skilled birder per team at least, and sometimes there is more."
