Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2023

Register to participate now!

The Calgary CBC will take place on Sunday December 17. If you want to take part either as part of a Field Team or as a backyard Feeder Watcher, please fill out the registration form. People who particpated last year will have already received this by email. Please only register once!

CBC Coordinator Matthew Wallace has created a CBC2023 Registration Form for all participants to fill out. We know that it’s a bit of a pain to have to fill this out annually. However, it drastically reduces the number of emails Matt receives and helps him to keep all of the information better organized (and updated if there are changes to your contact information). Please feel free to share the form with anyone you know who may be interested in taking part! The form is for ALL participants (Field Teams and Feeder Watchers).

Note that to be a Feeder Watcher, recording birds in your yard, you have to live within the Count Circle, which does not include the entire city. We will inform you if you resgister as a Feeder Watcher and your address lies outside the circle.

Great Horned Owl photographed by Matthew Wallace on last year’s Calgary CBC. December 19, 2021, Tsuut’ina Nation, Calgary.

Below is more information about the count from Matt Wallace:

Calgary Count Day: Sunday, December 17, 2023

As you know, we have two divisions for people to participate. Field Teams and Feeder Watchers. Both are critical roles for us to be able to get adequate coverage of the circle area. Below is a brief summary of the roles. I also want to thank both Lara Fitzpatrick and Bob Lefebvre for agreeing to assist with compilation of all of your data submissions!

Field Teams:
Field Teams are composed of a circle Section Leader and section teams which help to survey a specific region of the circle. Leaders are generally carried forward from previous years but we often require a handful of NEW leaders to assist in circle areas which are unable to participate in any given year. The teams of volunteers communicate with their leaders to find out where they will survey. Sometimes this is as a group and other times teams are split up to cover their section. Each year we try our best to get everyone who has expressed interest in joining field teams out in the field and in an area of the city that they are interested in (BUT this is not always possible due to having too many people in one section and not others). Participants who are assigned to teams will be contacted by their Section Leaders to coordinate meeting locations or objectives (i.e. areas to search) in early December. Any late registrations will be offered spots where we are lacking participants. Trust me when I say we’ll do our best to get you in a zone that’s interesting but please have an open mind and be willing to travel if needed.

Field Team Data Submission: Once again, we are using eBird to submit our information: bird data (All birds identified and counted). Effort Data is collected by the section leaders for the entire team and is submitted via email using a template.

On the form this year I included a “Comments” section where you can express any interest in potentially being a new field leader.

Feeder Watchers:

FWs are responsible for counting birds at their properties on count day (Dec. 17). Feeder Watchers must reside or be participating at a residence within the count circle for us to be able to use the data. The minimum time required for counting birds is 30 minutes over the course of the day. This can be as a single session or broken up at various times throughout the day. Counting for longer than 30 minutes is encouraged! There is a specific methodology into how birds are counted as an FW. So if you register to be an FW, we will send out instructions into how this works prior to the count.

Feeder Watcher Data Submission: FW data is collected using templates and submitted back via email.

Count Week (December 14-20):

The CBC is essentially a census of all of the birds within our area. Occasionally, we can miss a couple rare birds so count week is an opportunity to scout locations and pick up any birds we may have missed. If you see any interesting birds during this period, please email me directly [citynatureyyc@gmail.com] so that we can include them as “Count Week” birds or notify section leaders to try and find them on count day!

Game Birds Taking Refuge in Our City

Nov5

By Cathy Warwick

Where is one place a bird bred for the sport of hunting can be and not get shot at? In the city of course! Yes there are lots of other dangers, namely cars, but there are less predators and less people in camouflage fatigues lurking behind trees ready to shoot. It’s positively a paradise for game birds! In Calgary there are a couple populations of game birds hiding out that you might be lucky enough to see. These are the Gray Partridge and the Ring-necked Pheasant. (Another local game bird, the Ruffed Grouse, is usually only found in small numbers in the conifer forests on the west edge of the city, and is pretty hard to find.)

While walking in our southwest neighbourhood I saw a small group of Gray Partridge for the very first time in my life. They were small plump chicken-like birds with a cinnamon patch on the face. These little round birds were running along the ground very fast, they were moving as a group with no apparent leader. They seemed to spook at the sight of us and hustled along a chain link fence. The problem was half were on the inside of the fence and half were on the outside. They ran most of the length of the fence before they noticed what had happened. The whole group then stopped and cheeped for a while in confusion. I’m not sure they are the sharpest knives in the drawer but they sure are cute. In the half-light we saw some of them fly up over the fence, which seems to be a last resort for them.

The Gray Partridge was introduced to North America from Europe in the early 1900s. It is mostly found on farmland, especially in the Northern Prairies where it somehow survives the cold winter. The hens will lay a lot of eggs, more than most birds. Up to 22 in a clutch! These birds also have very short life spans, only averaging 1.8 years.

I was biking along the Bow River bike path to Fish Creek Park and saw a Ring-necked Pheasant wandering around the back yards bordering the path. What a show stopper that rooster is! I screeched to a halt and looked at its bright red face, beautiful iridescent blue head and very long tail. Also the white ring around its neck of course. The female (hen) is a more camouflage brown and is smaller than the rooster. The roosters are very striking and colourful, the allaboutbirds.org website even calls them ‘gaudy’. That may be a backhanded way of saying they don’t really belong in our landscape. You can get an inkling of that just by looking at them, North American species are usually a bit more subdued in colour. The Ring-necked sure aren’t camouflaged with that attire!

In fact their populations are supplemented heavily by the Alberta Conservation Association which runs a “Provincial Pheasant Release Program”. I hear they released melanistic Ring-necked pheasants this year, which have an all black body. Still not great for hiding from coyotes during the winter. It’s actually the hens that have a much harder time during the winter, they do all the work with the eggs and the chicks. Thus they spend a lot less time fattening up for winter. Lucky for them that hunters are encouraged to shoot the males.

Keep your eyes out for these game birds sheltering in our city and when you see one take a moment to appreciate all that it has to survive – hunters, traffic and worst of all, winter.

Learn more about Gray Partridge and Ring-necked Pheasants on eBird.

A Merlin in Our Midst

Oct15

By Cathy Warwick

Introducing Catherine Warwick – Cathy is a local birder who has been living in Calgary since 1997. She has been birding seriously for about fifteen years. She enjoys hiking, writing, and tavelling. Cathy has been writing an article about birds for the Lakeview News and Views newsletter for the past year or so. Birds Calgary will be featuring her new articles here monthly, and reposting some older ones too. Welcome aboard, Cathy!

A Merlin in our Midst

You may have seen a Merlin swoop past and thought – “That is one fast Robin.” This small but fierce falcon is a very fast flier, so fast it’s usually a blur. So you can be forgiven for mistaking it for a Robin that has gone to the gym regularly and lost its big red belly, as well as gaining some wing definition. What unmistakably identifies it as a Merlin, however, is the call it is making as it swoops around. They make a loud, “Klee-klee-kleeee” sound in flight that evokes the wilderness. This call is drawn out and falls in volume as it happens. In addition to the sound you can look for a smart-looking striped tail and sharp wings should it happen to land and give you an eyeful.

In Calgary I have seen them at the tops of trees, speeding around and calling out noisily. Sometimes they will have Magpies and Crows chasing them. This drama in the birding world is understandable when you find out that Merlins don’t build their own nest, they essentially take over the nest of a Magpie, Crow or another raptor. How lazy! No wonder the Crows and Magpies try to chase them away. Merlins have been known to lay their eggs right on top of a domed Magpie nest. The mother Magpie would be moving her brood in a hurry. Pack your bags kids, a killer has moved upstairs!

The Merlin is one of the smallest raptors in Alberta and is pretty darn cute. They must be terrifying to songbirds however, swooping in and picking off the slowest. Songbirds are its main source of food. Consider this: A Sparrow weighs about one ounce, as much as a pencil, thus a Merlin is estimated to eat about 900 a year. It’s a lot of work! They need all their energy for their fancy aerodynamics, and can’t waste it on such mundane things as building a nest. Most of their kills happen in the air, probably because they are such terrific fliers. It’s no wonder little birds seem nervous all the time, one minute you’re flying around and the next you are snatched up by a pint-sized raptor. Merlins eat pigeons too, which are basically the same size as them, talk about fierce!

It’s possible the ones in Calgary will over winter here, city Merlins often stay instead of heading to South America like they are supposed to. Merlins just started to be city dwellers as recently as 1960, possibly at the same time as House Sparrows became plentiful. Merlins have a long history with people anyway, in medieval times they were trained as hunting falcons. They were called ‘Lady hawks’ because women favoured them. Is it because our puny lady arms would crumple under a big falcon? No, surely it’s because a Merlin’s charm is as large as they are small.

The best birding app out there is named after them in fact. If you ever want to identify a bird by sound just get the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Labs. It’s a miracle to hold up a phone to a singing bird and get an identification right away. It makes birding a lot easier.

Seeing a Merlin is the birding equivalent of a bolt of lightning, streaking around our residential streets.

You can find out more about Merlins here.

City Nature Challenge Starts Friday!

Apr27

Sign up for some of the many events this weekend.

The Calgary City Nature Challenge runs from Friday to Monday, April 28 to May 1. Everyone is welcome to participate anywhere in the Calgary CNC Region by taking photographs of any living thing and posting them to the iNaturalist website or smart phone app. There are many public events this year as well, some of which start as soon as Friday morning, so check the links below to find an event near you.

From organizer Matthew Wallace:

The fifth annual Calgary City Nature Challenge (CNC) will take place April 28-May 1. If you’re unfamiliar with the CNC, it has grown immensely since it began in 2016. At the time there were only two cities competing against one another (Los Angeles and San Francisco). It is now considered to be the largest global bioblitz and one of the largest citizen science events in the world. This year there are 462 cities competing from across the globe. Forty-three cities are within Canada including Calgary, Edmonton, and Red Deer within Alberta.

There are three categories in which cities compete: Which city can make the most observations, document the most species, and engage the most people. When we say “compete” it’s really just a friendly competition for bragging rights with each city individually organizing their own local bioblitz. People participate by taking photos of plants and animals and uploading them to the iNaturalist app (or iNaturalist.ca when posting from digital cameras and within Canada).

The Calgary Metropolitan region is our local area and includes the city of Calgary, Cochrane, Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Glenbow Ranch, Foothills County, and Rocky View County. Over the four days, any observations made within this area are automatically included in the Calgary iNaturalist Project. (Follow this page to see our progress over the four days.)

Calgary CNC Map — The Calgary Metropolitan Region for the CNC.

Our goal is to achieve a new Canadian record (>10,000 observations). We have been inching closer to this target number each year with almost 6800 observations shared in 2022. Keep your eye on the leaderboards to see how cities around the world are doing.

CNC Global leaderboard

CNC Canada leaderboard

From April 28-May 1, make as many observations as you can by taking photos of plants, animals, and fungi as you explore our region. You don’t have to go far to participate: Look in your yards, neighbourhoods and favorite parks. There are also a series of public events this year which had been on pause during 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic. It’s a welcome addition to have our naturalist communities be able to get outside and work together to achieve a common goal. For more information on events and resources to help you get started visit www.citynatureyyc.ca.

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For the events list, see this page. This year there are many events both inside Calgary and in outlying areas, including one in Airdrie on Friday morning, two in Glenbow Ranch on Saturday plus one on Sunday, and one in Big Hill Springs on Sunday. Take as many good photos as you can. You will have until May 7 to upload them to iNaturalist (but the sooner the better, so we have time to identify everything). If you have good knowledge of birds, plants, insects, fungi, mammals, or other living things, you can also participate by helping to identify the observervations made here or anywhere on iNaturalist.

Have fun, and help us get to 10,000 observations!!

Join the New Year’s Day Bird Count!

Dec27

Fish Creek Provincial Park half-day count needs more birders!

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

Each year on January 1st there is a half-day bird count done in Fish Creek Provincial Park. Team of birders go out to sevearal locations in the park, and we count all the species we can find, and the numbers of each. We find around 35-40 species on average.

Jim Washbrook has organized the count for several years, and he invites interested birders to contact him to join one of the field teams. You can email Jim at jwashbrook1{at}gmail.com.

The Fish Creek count is not an official Christmas Bird Count (CBC). CBC’s take place each year within a fixed 15-mile diameter (24 km diameter) circle. CBC circles cannot overlap, and the Calgary count circle, which lies just north of Fish Creek Park, was established in 1952. Due to the long east-west geography of the park and its proximity to the Calgary circle, there is no way to fully enclose the park within another CBC circle.

The Calgary area showing the CBC circle, with Fish Creek Park (more or less!) outlined just south of the circle.

The Fish Creek Count was started in 1994 to document the changes in bird populations within the park in winter. As you can see below, species numbers, number of participants in the count, and of course temperature, can fluctuate from year to year.

Jim would like to increase the number of participants so that we can fully cover all the areas in the park. You will be placed in one area, with a team led by an experienced birder. Teams meet in their areas and begin at 9 am, and finish by noon. Maybe this year all the teams can again meet to compare notes afterwards, as we always did pre-pandemic. It looks like the weather will be pretty good, so it will be a great opportunity to come out and give it a try! And it’s a great way to kick-start your birding year!

Winter Birds Update, December 21

Dec23

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

In early December I posted about the start of Winter Birding season. As usual, we picked up almost all of the commonly-occcuring winter species pretty quickly for our list. Before last weekend’s Calgary Christmas Bird Count, we were at 87 species. But we added four new species on the Calgary Count on December 18 (Varied Thrush at Queen’s Park Cemetery, Northern Shoveler at Bonnybrook waste treatment plant on the Bow River, Gadwall at a couple of locations on the Bow, and a Common Grackle seen at a feeder in SE Calgary). So, as of December 20, we were at 91 species for the Calgary region.

Common Grackle, photographed in mid-December in SE Calgary by Jennifer Howson. (Yes, I have spoken to her about the bread!)

The extreme cold weather we have been having is keeping birders from going out, and the birds are often sheltering, so one might think we would have a low number of species this year. But it is in line with the past few years:

Year	Total on Dec. 20	Final Total
2019	89	109
2020	98	119
2021	92	118
2022	91	???

(Data courtesy of Caroline Lambert. Caroline has done most of the work on the Calgary list again this year, as well as maintaining the Bow Valley list.)

There are several other Christmas Bird Counts in the region in the next ten days, so we should get a few more species on those. (Nature Calgary’s site has some information on some of the other counts if you wish to take part. There are also some Long-term Foothills Counts that may need addditional participants.) And then there is the long stretch from the beginning of January to the end of February to find more species. So we might end up with a total of well over 100 species again.

Some of the species that haven’t been reported yet this year but that we are still likely to find include Wild Turkey, Northern Pygmy-Owl, and Short-eared Owl. Those have all been seen in the five previous winters. American Kestrel and Red-winged Blackbird have also been seen in each of the last five winters, but I wonder if it is now less likely at this point that they will turn up. We have a good chance to get Clark’s Nutcracker (seen in three of the past five years but known to winter in nearby areas) and Black-backed Woodpecker (seen in four of the past five). Hoary Redpolls have also been seen in four of five years, but the low numbers of Redpolls around this year will make it a real challenge.

If you see somethig that is not yet on the list, please report it on the Albertabird site.

Meanwhile, over in the Bow Valley near Canmore and Banff, they have 55 species so far. They may not get to the record of 74 for the season, but should have a respectable total in the 60’s. You can follow the Bow Valley Birding Group on Facebook here.

Check out the Alberta Winter Bird List site to see the lists for Calgary, the Bow Valley, Edmonton, and the overall Provincial list.

We Need YOU For the Christmas Bird Count!

Dec11

Posted By Bob Lefebvre

I recently posted about the Calgary Christmas Bird Count, which is a week from today, on Sunday December 18th. Birders, like everyone else, have a lot of committments at this time of year, and we find ourselves a little short of help on some of the field routes. In particular, we need a few people who are good birders and also quite fit, who are able to do long walk through some difficult terrain. One such area is the Paskapoo Slopes near Canada Olympic Park, which has many deep ravines. Last year there was a Barred Owl at the west end of that area, but we missed it! We also need help in the Edgemont Ravines, and possibly in East Calgary at Elliston Park and area (Elliston is not as challenging of a walk). These are all good areas, so you might find something special!

Barred Owl, photographed on Count Day in 2021 near Cougar Ridge. We didn’t know about it until long after the count. Photo by Orlando Pastran, courtesy of Joachim Bertrands.

If you are not up to a long difficult route, or are less experienced, you are still welcome to help out in the field. You will be placed on a team with experienced birders.

For those of you who can’t make it out in the field but watch birds in your yard, we will take as many Feeder Watchers as we can get! We are particularly short in the NE quadrant of the city. Feeder-Watching does not require a long time commitment and can be done in as little as fifteen minutes, or in intervals during the day. Of course, to take part you must live within the count circle.

Calgary CBC Circlle — The Calgary Christmas Bird Count Circle, from Google Earth. Look at all the green space we have to cover!

If you would like to participate this year, or even if you just want more information or may want to take part next year, please fill out the registration form and we will be in contact with you.

REGISTER HERE for the Calgary Christmas Bird Count.

If you had previously registered, you will be contacted this week.

Last year, our Feeder Watchers had some good birds:

Fox Sparrow, the first ever on our count, found in the yard of Feeder Watcher Lucy Batycky. Photo by Bob Lefebvre.

Northern Saw-whet Owl on the 2021 Calgary CBC. Photo by Alan Covington.

Register Now For the Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2022!

Nov20

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

Calgary’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) takes place on Sunday December 18, 2022! CBC began in 1900 and is the world’s longest-running citizen science event. The count has been going on in Calgary since 1952 and is a valuable resource for understanding species and population trends of birds found in Calgary and around the world.

Matthew Wallace will once again be organizing the count and compiling the results. Lara Fitzpatrick and I will assist once again.

Please take a minute to fill out the Registration form here. Unless you are a Feeder Watcher who has already been assigned to a FW Captain, we are asking everyone to register, even if you have participated last year or in many past years. This helps to ensure we have the correct and most up-to-date contact information for each person and reduces the thousands of emails down to a more manageable size. It also helps Matthew to organize the required participant information that is submitted to Audubon and confirm that feeder watcher residences are within the count circle.

Completing the form will ensure that you will receive information that will follow in the next few days. The form is required for both feeder watchers and field participants. It can be shared with anyone who may wish to take part this year. Please share widely. If you are not sure that you can participate, or if you would like more information about the count, please fill out the form so we can contact you.

Count Week Birds: If you come across any interesting birds during count week (December 15-21), please send information to citynatureyyc@gmail.com including any notes, counts, or photos you may have.

You can check out this recap video by Matthew Wallace of the Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2021. There was also a post on this blog about the results: Calgary Christmas Bird Count Final Results.

Bohemian Waxwings seen on last year’s Count. Photo by Arthur Wieckowski, December 19, 2021.

Happy Birding and Happy Holidays!

Vote for Calgary’s Official Bird!

Apr2

In 2021 Calgary was one of four Canadian cities to be designated as bird-friendly cities. As part of the effort to increase awareness of challenges that urban birds face, Bird Friendly Calgary is holding a vote to designate an official bird for Calgary.

The hope is to raise awareness about the importance of urban wildlife, to help mitigate threats to birds, to increase education and public engagement, and to celebrate Calgary’s birds!

The public can now choose an official bird from the five short-listed candidates. You can vote on the Calgary Bird page. You can also make suggestion on how to make Calgary a more bird-friendly city.

Calgary-Official-Bird-Poster Download

Got to Nature Canada’s Bird Friendly City page to find out more about this program.

The Calgary Winter Birds List – One Week To Go

Feb19

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

For the past five years Caroline Lambert and I have been keeping track of all species reported in the Calgary region in the winter months (December 1 to February 28). This is something that Gerry Fox has done for the Edmonton birding community for many years. Caroline also keeps a list for the Bow Valley birding area in the Banff-Canmore area. There is also a long-standing list for the whole province that is maintained by Richard Klauke.

Northern Flicker puffed up at -30 Celcius. We may get a little more weather like that yet! Photographed in Calgary on January 2022 by Ray Turner.

It’s interesting to see how many species and how many rarities we can find in the winter, and many birders like to keep a personal winter list so that they have incentive to get out during these slow birding months.

The Calgary region is the 80-km diameter circle that is also used for the May Species Count:

Here are the numbers of species we have recorded:

In the first two years we only accepted sightings that were posted to Albertabird but since then we have included any confirmed sightings we can get. So, although it is a small sample size, 110 to 120 species seems to be what we get in the winter.

We are currently at 113 species. The most recent additions, since January 15, are Red Crossbill, Purple Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Clark’s Nutcracker.

As always seems to happen when you keep a list, we have had some great rarities this year, but we have also missed on some species we usually get. But there is still a little over a week to go, so maybe we can find two or three more.

The three species that have been reported in all four previous years but not this year are American Kestrel, Harris’s Sparrow, and American Goldfinch. It seems a long shot that these will be found at this point, but it’s surprising that none have been seen.

Spruce Grouse is definitely a species we should be able to find. It was reported in three out of the four previous winters. Although their range is restricted to the western edge of the circle, there should be some around.

The other possibilities are the three local “hard-to-find” owls, Barred, Long-eared, and Boreal. And sometimes we get California Gulls or even Ring-billed before the end of February.

My personal winter list is now up to 44 species, which is still very low. I have only six species that are only or primarily seen in winter, plus a lot of resident birds and seasonal rarities. So I have nine days to go find Snowy Owls, Snow Buntings, Pine Grosbeaks, Northern Shrikes, and many others!

My best “winter” bird this year, a seasonally rare Fox Sparrow. Photo by Bob Lefebvre

Here is a link to the page that Caroline maintains with all four winter lists. If you’ve seen any of the species that haven’t yet been reported this winter, let me know.

Previous posts on Albertabird about the 2021-2022 Calgary winter list:

December 2 – 41 species.

December 18 – 90 species.

January 15 – 109 species.

Birds Calgary

A birding blog for Calgary, Alberta and area

Archives

Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2023

Register to participate now!

Game Birds Taking Refuge in Our City

A Merlin in Our Midst

City Nature Challenge Starts Friday!

Sign up for some of the many events this weekend.

Join the New Year’s Day Bird Count!

Winter Birds Update, December 21

We Need YOU For the Christmas Bird Count!

Register Now For the Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2022!

Vote for Calgary’s Official Bird!

The Calgary Winter Birds List – One Week To Go

Register to participate now!

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