The May Species Count covers a huge area in the Calgary region. Volunteers go out to their designated routes on either the Saturday or Sunday (or both) and record all the bird species they see, and the numbers of each. There will likely be several routes available in the city and in rural areas. You should have a choice of a small or large city area, or a large rural territory or a part of one.
The birds above were seen on the 2023 May Species Count in the Longview Area, May 28, 2023. Photos by Bob Lefebvre.
Results are submitted by eBird and you are encouraged to get some photographs too. If you are inexperienced and not confident to go out on your own, you may be placed with an existing group.
The 80-km radius Calgary Count Circle with the rural territories numbered. There are numerous different habitats represented, including prairie, parkland, urban, boreal forest, and foothills.
The routes available will be known soon and I will post updated information. If you are not already slated to take part and are interested to join us, or for more information, email the organizer Andrew Hart at andrewhartch[at]icloud.com. Andrew is out of the country right now so if you just want more information about the count, email me at birdscalgary[at]gmail.com.
Ruddy Duck “blowing bubbles”American CootRedheadMallard hen and chicksLesser ScaupRed-necked Grebes on nest
The photos above were taken on the May Species Count in 2021 on the Bridlewood Pond in Calgary. Photos by Bob Lefebvre.
The sixth annual Calgary City Nature Challenge is coming up soon. This four-day bioblitz is an effort to try to record as much of the Calgary and area biodiversity as possible. Cities around the world will be taking part in this effort, and competing to see who makes the most observations and records the most species. As usual, Calgary will be competing to try to increase our own participation and species numbers here.
From CNC Organizer Matthew Wallace:
The sixth annual Calgary City Nature Challenge takes place April 26-29! Over 650 cities worldwide will compete and collaborate to showcase their urban biodiversity! Participate by taking photos of wild plants and animals in your yards, neighborhoods, and favorite parks over the four days. Then, upload your observations to the iNaturalist app or iNaturalist.ca!
There are several public events happening across the city which include pollinator walks, guided birding tours, and park bioblitzes. You can also just head out to explore on your own or with a group of friends.
Participate anywhere within the Calgary Metropolitan Region which includes Calgary, Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Rocky View County, and Foothills County.
The deadline to upload your observations to iNaturalist is midnight May 5.
Cities will compete to see which can make the most observations, document the most species, and engage the most people. Calgary aims to be the top-performing Canadian city with a goal of over 10,000 observations posted. Make as many observations as you can April 26-29 so get outside and help to put Calgary’s biodiversity on the map!
Check out all of the CNC resources on the following pages:
As birders, we can participate by taking as many photos of birds as we can over the four days. Any identifiable photo is good so don’t worry too much about the quality of your pictures. We also need to document everything, so don’t hesitate to photograph House Sparrows, Black-billed Magpies, and other common species. Then you have until midnight on May 5 to upload your photos to iNaturalist.
An adult Bald Eagle I photographed near the Inglewood Golf Course on the 2023 CNC. Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
While you’re out there, you can also get photos of non-bird biodiversity with your camera. Maybe you won’t know what species you have, but iNaturalist has an artificial intelligence that can help with the ID, and even if you have no idea, other iNaturalist users will help to identify everything.
Green-striped GrasshopperCanadian Beaver (signs of a species also count)Western Terrestial Garter SnakeHunt’s Bumble Bee and Golden Bean (two observations)CoyoteTansy
These were a few of the other species I saw on the 2023 CNC. I didn’t know some of the species identifications until I entered them into iNaturalist. (Photos by Bob Lefebvre.)
Since I have my phone with me when I’m birding, I can use it to get photos of other species which are difficult to get with a big camera (photos by Bob Lefebvre):
Elegant Sunburst LichenBrickwork WoodlouseWormwood Wallflower (not yet confirmed by the iNaturalist community)
I have found it to be a great experience to use iNaturalist to learn more about our overall biodiversity. Like most birders, I am interested in all of nature, not just birds.
Watch this short video about the 2024 Calgary City Nature Challenge:
Matthew has set a goal of having 10,000 observations made over the four days this year. In 2023 we had 9,301, so we are getting closer! We also hope to better our total of 762 species recorded last year.
So check out the project links above and plan to participate in an event, or just head out on your own!
Mountain Bluebird, photographed by Carole Steeves,Carburn Park, Calgary, 21 March 2024.
The Mountain Bluebirds are back in Calgary and surrounding areas! The “Friends of Fish Creek” birders saw five at Carburn Park on March 21st. The Bluebirds appear to arrive faithfully on the Spring Equinox every year. This picture Carole Steeves took of a Mountain Bluebird sort of sums it up. Imagine you fly all night from the Southern States and, exhausted, you land in Calgary only to be greeted by a cold wind and snow covering all the food. Perhaps I am projecting my own “snow-fatigue” onto this bird in the picture. Hang in there little guy, things will turn around soon. And then it will get bad again, and then better again… this is Calgary after all.
This cold Bluebird is probably stuck eating seeds and old berries it finds. When the weather gets warmer it will switch to its main food source – insects. According to Audobon.com, it especially likes caterpillars, beetles and grasshoppers. Maybe that’s why it makes its home in the open fields around Southern Alberta, a lot of bugs.
Male Mountain Bluebird. Photo NPS/Patrick Myers from Wikimedia Commons.
Years ago my family traveled up to the Ellis Bird Farm near Lacombe expecting to see a flock of Mountain Bluebirds in the spring. It was there that I learned that the bluebirds are very territorial while breeding and, according to their fact sheet, need to nest about 2-3 acres apart. That is why the nest boxes are put on what is called a ‘Mountain Bluebird Trail’. There are many such trails in Alberta and the efforts of volunteers building and monitoring nesting boxes can be read about all over the internet. It’s fun to slowly drive down a Bluebird trail. If you’re lucky you will see the unmistakable bright blue of a Male Mountain Bluebird. They are like a piece of the summer sky come to life. If you see a bird pop out of the nest that is more navy blue with a bright white chest then is probably a Tree Swallow that has taken a nest box.
Male Mountain Bluebird at nest box, SW of Calgary, May 2011. Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
Like the Blue Jay the blue comes from the structure of the feathers and the way it refracts the light. There is no actual blue pigment in the Mountain Bluebirds feathers. This is probably one of the more irritating facts that you can tell a beginner birder – “That bird isn’t really blue you know.” Birders already have a nerdy reputation so let’s use this fact sparingly. It’s interesting though, this bird really is sky blue, as the sky is also just refracted blue wavelengths.
A pair of courting Mountain Bluebirds near Madden, north of Calgary, May 25, 2018. The male has just brought food to the female. Photo by Vincent Tolley.
The Mountain Bluebirds are in a hot competition for nesting cavities. They fight Tree Swallows, House Sparrows, other Mountain Bluebirds and worst of all – the European Starling. Yes, these aren’t your blue birds of song, flitting around Cinderella and landing on available shoulders. Reading about them on the internet the adjective “aggressive” comes up a lot. The Mountain Bluebirds are tough fighters scraping out a living. Needless to say, their population numbers fluctuate and although they are currently listed as ‘Least Concern’ their peak in population was in the 1940’s. According to the Nature Conservancy of Canada they have decreased by approximately 26 per cent between 1966 and 2014. Their scrappy, fighting spirit will be needed, as well as the help from the nest box volunteers.
This one is a male Tree Swallow. You will see more Tree Swallows than Mountain Bluebirds on the Bluebird Trails. Calgary, 2008, Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
Note: In addition to a number of migrating Mountain Bluebirds that have been seen along the Bow River in the past two weeks, there was a pair of Western Bluebirds seen at Carburn Park up until March 30. This species is rarely seen in Alberta, and this is likely the first sighting ever in the city.
The last time I saw a Brown Creeper I was cross-country skiing at Confederation Park and had stopped at the top of a hill to catch my breath. I was near a stand of Spruce trees and noticed a piece of the bark was moving. Of course it wasn’t the bark – it was a tiny brown bird moving up the tree. The Brown Creeper is not a well-known bird largely because they lay low, extremely low. They are elusive and mysterious but when you see one its behaviour and look is unmistakable. If you decide to add it to your Life List and go out looking for one, good luck! You’re going to need it. Another strategy is to read this article to familiarize yourself with the Brown Creeper for the day you see one, then you can point to it and yell “a Brown Creeper!”
Brown Creeper. From Wildreturn at Wikimedia.com
First of all they are tiny, their body is about the length of a thumb, add to that their long brown tail. Secondly they have amazing camouflage, they have brown feathers on the top of their body, perfectly suited to hide against a spruce tree. Their underside is a white colour, this countershading camouflages them when flying. Their stealth colouring is only undone by their song, a high pitched tssst sound. That’s where you come in with your phone at the ready, the Merlin Bird ID app open. It can identify a Brown Creeper and then you can look for it by its song.
If you get a good enough look you will see its curved bill, perfect for digging in the bark where other birds can’t get to. It eats the insects, their eggs and pupae, hidden in the bark. In photos you can see its relatively long feet, which help it hang on to the bark as it creeps upward in a spiral. Once they have checked out a tree they will fly to the base of the next and start up that one. I wonder if the nuthatch, going down and the creeper, going up, have ever bumped their little heads together. What an adorable mishap that would be.
A colourful Creeper photographed in Elliston Park, January 23, 2017. Photo by Bree Tucker.
The Brown Creeper needs live trees to forage on and dead and dying trees to nest in, they use the whole forest lifecycle (allaboutbirds.com). The English traditional park of rolling green lawns with large trees studding it is horrible for wildlife. In our city it’s nice we have some Creeper friendly ‘messy parks’ like Weaslehead and Fish Creek.
A well-camouflaged Brown Creeper, Bebo Grove, Calgary, January 15, 2015. Photo by Dan Arndt.
Hopefully five years from now when you actually see a Brown Creeper on a tree you can recall the name of it. Maybe the fact that it is ‘creeping’ up the tree will twig your memory and you can yell out its name. Your advanced birding badge will be on its way if you succeed.
We had really good results on the Calgary CBC on Sunday December 17. The weather was still very mild, and we had a lot of partcipation both in the field and at backyard feeders. The species total was 72, with an additional 2 Count Week species not seen on Count Day but seen on the three days before or after the count.
The first Cassin’s Finch ever seen on a Calgary CBC! Photo by Laura Bentley.
Below are the results as reported by Matt Wallace, the organizer of the count. First, watch a YouTube video with a quick summary. Next, the Summary Report has some details about the species counted on page one, and then a list of the birds on pages two and three. Just hover over the report and use the arrows at the bottom of the page to navigate there. Third, if you really want a lot of detail, and want to make your own graphs and so on, you can download the Results file. Finally, anyone can explore the eBird Trip Report, which includes all the checklists and photos submitted by our Field Teams.
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From Matt:
Lara, Bob, and myself finally have all of the numbers tallied for the 72nd annual Calgary Christmas Bird Count! After a few days of enjoying the holidays ourselves, we’ve got the results ready for you to enjoy and explore!
Count Summary:
So, our total count this year was 35,833 birds! We had 72 species documented on count day with 2 more species found during count week. We added 3 new species to our 72 year list which included a Cassin’s Finch, Gray Catbird, and Western Grebe. Our “Count Week Birds” were a Yellow-rumped Warbler and Winter Wren.
Overall, our total bird count was way down from previous years but our species count was right on par with our 15-year average. Our low numbers are undoubtedly related to our low counts of Canada Goose, Mallard, and Bohemian Waxwings. It’s challenging to say exactly why this is but likely related to the warm temperatures we’ve experienced with very little ice on the river. When we have lots of ice on the river system there are few places for waterfowl to congregate. The Elbow and Bow do not freeze over entirely even in the coldest of winter so this is where they gather. When there is very little ice the birds are unlikely to congregate within the count circle. We heard little about dead birds from field teams this year but we know that avian flu has been a big issue the past few years. This may have contributed to our lower counts but really it is not clear at this time. As for our finches and waxwings, our numbers were below what we expected but again there is bountiful food for them currently in the boreal regions which again would not drive them towards or into our circle.
Overall, we are really pleased with how the count went this year despite having lower numbers of birds. We heard from lots of people that they enjoyed their day exploring new areas of the city and getting to meet new birders. We had 16 brand new birders (less than one year of birding) and 74 participants who had never taken part in a CBC before! We also had several participants that were participating for their third or fourth decade! Just amazing to see the age range (4-99 years), diversity of skill levels, and support that our Calgary birding community brings together! Thank you for all of your hard work and we should all celebrate what we accomplished as a community!
Below are some ways you can explore the results in further in detail:
1) Results Video: If you’d like a quick recap of the event you can now view the Results video on YouTube. https://youtu.be/EgwSl1iEp6Y (see above). Please feel free to share and we’d love for a few likes and subscribers! If you submitted some photos, you’re likely to find a mention. We also had to cherry-pick a few photos from our eBird Trip Report but have credited each photographer. If you’re still sitting on some photos or videos from count day, please send these along so we can use them in our results presentation in January.
2) Summary Report (.PDF): This is a brief summary of all of the bird and effort data we collected showing the final results and a few graphs of how far we’ve come over the years.
3) Bonus: Results Excel File: This is a detailed snapshot of our “behind the scenes” work which Lara has masterfully crafted for our count circle the past three years. Feel free to explore this at your own leisure if you’re a data nerd like us! This may be a bit more technical than some people would like but I figured a few people may be interested in seeing it anyways. Download the file to explore it.
A few tips for this file:
Use the tabs at the bottom of the page. There are really only a few tabs to be concerned with here (Graphs, Analysis, and Report). Look for any bold red text to help you understand how to investigate the data:
Graphs Tab:
In cells A3 (species) and A37 (Family) you can enter any species we’ve ever had on the Calgary count to produce immediate graphs. You must type the exact spelling of the species you would like to review. If your graphs are appearing empty, the spelling is likely off. If you are unsure of the spelling you can copy and paste the names of the birds found in the “Report” tab. You can then hover your mouse over the graphs to see the numbers for each year.
Analysis Tab:
In Row 7 you can use the drop down filters to explore things like News species, Record Highs, Record Lows, and comparisons between our yearly averages for each species.
Report Tab:
This tab is essentially what you see in the Summary Report File.
The 2024 Calgary CBC will take place on December 22, 2024! I’ve gone ahead and set up the registration form for next year in the case you wanted to register in advance. Just a note that this form will be online throughout the year so there is no rush to get it filled out. We will be sending out reminders and information September-December 2024. https://forms.gle/wBcfCRD4sqFpQ8qq9
One thing that isn’t displayed on our spreadsheets is the number of NEW birders/ participants we had this year (see comments above). This is one of the reasons why we are using a registration form – simply because we want to keep the CBC as accessible as possible!
We are working with Nature Calgary to organize a CBC 2023 event presentation in January and will send out an invitation to all 2023 participants to join the event and do a more in-depth analysis of our results this year!
You may also know that I assist with organizing other citizen science events throughout the year including the Calgary City Nature Challenge, Bioblitzes, Biodiversity Challenge, National Moth Week, and various other bird counts! Most of these are shared on my social media pages (@ CityNatureYYC) on Instagram, Twitter (X), and Facebook. If you’re keen on participating in other events, give these pages a follow so you’re up to date on what is happening around Calgary and Southern Alberta! I also reshare any photos or videos people post so if you’re out on your own, tag me and I’ll reshare your nature stuff!
Thank you very much to all participants and we look forward to having you back next year! I hope you all had a great time and are enjoying your holidays.
More Birders Needed For the Calgary Christmas Bird Count.
Many of our regulars are away or busy with other events this year, so we have a bit of a shortage of birders to help with the count, which is next Sunday. We can use experienced birders who could lead the effort in a section of the city, or help with a field team in a section. Even if you are a novice birder you can help assist a field team. The more eyes the better! Plus we are always looking for more people to count birds at their backyard feeders. That can take as little as 30 minutes.
House Finch. A common backyard bird, but they all need counting! Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
You can register to participate in the count at this page. You may use this form even if you just want more information and may not take part this year. If you have any questions, you can email me at birdscalgary@gmail.com.
Thanks for helping out in this long-running Citizen Science project!
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!
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.
Gray Partridge. Photo by Diane Stinson.
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.
Gray Partridge near the irrigation canal below the Max Bell arena, May 1, 2023. Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
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.
A Ring-necked pheasant strutting its stuff. Photo by Diane Stinson.
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.
A Ring-necked Pheasant showing its beautiful tail. Photo by Diane Stinson.
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.
Juvenile Merlin. Photo by Dianne Stinson.
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!
Merlin on nest in a spruce tree, Calgary. This looks like an old Magpie nest. Photo by Bob Lefebvre.
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!
Male Merlin. Males have a blue-gray back; females and young are brown. Photo by Dianne Stinson.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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!!
