Tri-City birders ready for 56th annual Christmas count
Lace up those hiking boots and grab your binoculars — the Tri-Cities Christmas bird count, organized annually by the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society, is taking place this weekend.
Volunteers will gather at multiple sites at 7:30 a.m. Saturday in Kennewick, Richland and Pasco.
This is the Tri-City region’s 56th annual Christmas count. It’s part of the larger National Audubon Society Christmas Day Bird Count, deemed the nation’s “longest-running community science bird project.”
“It shows you trends in species,” said Dana Ward, count coordinator with the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society of Washington. “Whether they’re moving north, sound, east or west. Whether their populations are stable, growing or vanishing.
“What I like is contributing to science, doing something I enjoy, getting outdoors and the fun of just seeing the birds.”
Ward said they’re hoping for calm weather over the weekend to bring out plenty of waterfowl and birds of prey. The count can vary from “fun to being flat-out miserable,” depending on the weather.
A slight chance of rain or snow is forecast before 10 a.m. Saturday in the Tri-Cities region, according to the National Weather Service in Pendleton. The high temperature will be 39 and mostly cloudy.
This year’s bird count will be especially exhilarating because of the recent sighting of a male eastern bluebird in Leslie Groves Park in Richland. The species is rarely seen this side of the Continental Divide, and its sighting a month ago marked the first-ever sighting of that species in Washington state.
Ward said witnessing the bird forage along the Columbia River was “pretty sensational.”
This weekend, birders will count all species within a 15-mile radius at the point where the Columbia River meets Road 68 in Pasco. It’s an area that covers about 177 square miles.
The Tri-Cities count regularly sees the highest number of species recorded in inland Washington state. Ward said that’s partly due to the confluence of the Columbia, Yakima and Snake rivers.
“The river is the No. 1 calling card for waterfowl,” said Ward, who has led the count the last 20 years.
Sixty-three professional and amateur birders and scientists participated in last year’s bird count, combing more than 100 miles on foot. In total, 117 species were identified and tens of thousands of birds were tallied.
About 6,879 Canadian geese alone were tallied last year along the Mid-Columbia. And 1,386 American robins were counted, too.
Among the sparsest seen were the brown creeper (two, seen last year), burrowing owl (one), long-eared owl (one), and the peregrine falcon (one).
Climate change has played a major role in displacing large numbers of bird species from certain parts of the continental U.S. The brown creeper, for example, is a common small winter bird in eastern Washington, but early spring heat waves can endanger its hatchlings.
Populations of Tri-City western meadowlark, horned lark, chukars and common pheasants are disappearing or have been on the decline in recent years, Ward said, due to the removal of shrubsteppe arid habitat mostly because of housing developments.
None of the species appear to be federally listed, though.
But Ward warns that “their habitat is disappearing.”
Overall, Ward says, the Mid-Columbia watershed remains a relatively vibrant and healthy ecosystem for birds.
Other species seen last winter include the ruddy duck, lesser goldfinch, downy woodpecker, bald eagle and the black-capped chickadee.
In lieu of the annual potluck hosted after each Christmas count, the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society is planning to host a Zoom discussion to talk about their sightings at 6 p.m. Saturday.
Meeting information is posted on the group’s website.
Ward said they might host a potluck in the spring, depending on community transmission rates of COVID.
An official tally from the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society will be submitted to the National Audubon Society two to three weeks after the count is finished. Those results will then be posted online at a later date.
