Tag Archive | calgary birds

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!

Update on the City Nature Challenge

May6

Help Calgary to reach its CNC goals this weekend!

Wanted: Plant, fungus, insect, and bacteria experts!

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

The 5th annual City Nature Challenge took place last week, from April 28 to May 1. The period for making observations has ended, but participants have until midnight on Sunday May 7 to upload their photos. Many of us are still working on that. In addition, all the observations need to be identified and have at least two people agree on the species to be considered Research Grade. You can help with this!

But first an update on where the challenge stands. Calgary is doing very well again, and has set new city records for the number of observations, species recorded, and participants. Matthew Wallace, the organizer of the Calgary CNC, had set a goal of 10,000 observations made in the Calgary area. Although we are not there yet, we are close.

Although the CNC is not really a competition between cities due to differences in climate, habitats, and human populations, nevertheless we should note that Calgary is among the Canadian leaders in total observations made, and may well finish with the most. On Monday evening Montreal was leading with 6,516 observation, with Victoria at 6,344 and Calgary in third place with 6,137. As of late Friday (May 5) Calgary has taken the lead among Canadian cities:

It’s interesting to look at the statistics for the Global CNC:

Over 64,000 observers made 1.75 million observations and identified over 55,000 species worldwide in the four days. The numbers from the leading city, La Paz in Bolivia, are staggering! Over 3,000 people made 122,000 observations and identified over 5,000 species! It shows the difference that climate and geography make, but it also shows what can be achieved with a year-round concerted effort to get people involved. La Paz has a metropolitan population of about 2 million, so it is comparable to Calgary.

Below are the statistics for Calgary as of late Friday. So far, 760 species have been reported by 336 observers. Identifications have been provided by 392 people.

Once again Matthew Wallace was extremely busy on the weekend, making over 1,100 observations and recording 214 species (so far). But many others have also made hundreds of observations and recorded over 100 species each.

As you can see above, the Prairie Pasqueflower (the familiar spring crocus) is by far the most commonly reported species. Usually it is Mallard in first place, but the unusually hot and dry weather this year means that there were more early flowering plants reported, and more insects as well. This is where you come in.

When a photo is uploaded to iNaturalist, the artificial intelligence will try to identify it, and the observer can accept one of the suggestions or, if they know the species, can write it in or override a suggestion. Then all the other iNaturalist users in the world are able to view the observation, and agree with the identification or suggest an alternate one. Once an observation is uploaded with date, location, and a photo or sound file (and is wild or uncultivated), it is labelled “Needs ID.” Observations become “Research Grade” once 2/3 of identifiers agree on a species-level (or lower) ID. These are then eligible to be used in research projects.

There have been many observations submitted for the Calgary CNC that do not yet have a species-level ID, so are not Research Grade (this is normal; we want to get the photos of every species we can, whether we can confidently identify it or not. Identification comes later). All of the yellow ones below (about 3,000 observations) need additional identification. (Casual observations are not eligible for Research Grade. An example is a captive animal or cultivated plant.)

Any iNaturalist user can help to identify our observations from the CNC, or from anywhere in the world at any time. To see the Calgary observations, go to the Calgary Project Page. Click on the Observations tab, then “Identify.”

Here you can agree with the observer’s ID, or suggest another. See what the AI suggests. Where there are multiple photos of a species (like the Canadian Beaver, which has 3 photos) you can view them all. The filter set is the Calgary CNC region, but you can click that and set many more filters. For example, you might only be confident identifying birds, so you can set it to show only those. Birds are often quite easy to ID and there is a big birding community, so most of the bird observations quickly become Research Grade. But there are some unusual ones or less-than-perfect photos that still need ID for you keen birders. You can set a filter for “Needs ID” and only those will come up.

If you are a plant, fungus, insect, or bacteria expert, there are many more observations that need to be verified. So if you think you can help, please open an account on iNaturalist Canada and give it a try! As I said, the project is complete at midnight on Sunday, but you can continue to contribute identifications (and observations!) to iNaturalist year-round. I find it is a lot of fun and a great way to learn to identify more species of all kinds.

For those of you who are interested in taking part in bioblitzes like the City Nature Challenge, the next such local event on iNaturalist is the Metro Calgary Biodiversity Challenge from June 8-11. See the project page for more information.

Lights Out For Migration!!

Apr30

Help migrating songbirds by keeping our night skies dark.

Spring migration is well under way, but as far as songbirds go, it will really pick up steam for the month of May. Songbirds migrate at night, and they can become disoriented by artificial light. This can cause them to be drawn off their normal path and into a more dangerous urban area, where they may collide with windows and other human structures, or be taken by predators.

Sparrows, warblers, and other songbirds will soon be moving through the city in large numbers. Lincoln’s Sparrow, Orange-crowned Warbler. Photos by Bob Lefebvre.

In 2021, Calgary became one of Canada’s first certified Nature Canada Bird Friendly Cities. Bird Friendly Calgary is the local organization whose mission is to highlight and mitigate threats that have contributed to a decline in bird populations of an estimated three billion over the last fifty years. As part of these efforts, Bird Friendly Calgary has a “Lights Out” initiative they would like to pass on to the local birding community. It is asking for everyone to turn off all unnecessary lights between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM during the migration periods of spring and fall. For spring they are targeting April 1st to June 15th with special emphasis on the month of May.

Please try to keep your houses and yards as dark as is safe at these times.

Lighted office towers are also a great threat to migrating birds and bats, and a huge number die or are injured each year in collisions with office buildings across North America. The Calgary Urban Species Response Team is active during migration in searching for such birds and bats in the downtown core, and trying to rescue any injured ones. The hope is that they can find out where the major problem areas are, and find ways to mitigate the loss of bird and bat life. See their site to find out more about this problem and the great work they are doing.

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.

________________________________________________________

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.

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.

Wild Bird Store Speaker Series Begins March 16

Mar15

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

The Wild Bird Store in SE Calgary not only offers bird feed and every other product for the backyard birder, but they also have a very good Speaker Series featuring many great presenters on a variety of topics of interest to local birders.

The talks will all be done using Zoom. There are six upcoming talks on the next six Wednesdays, starting tomorrow with Dan Arndt speaking on Alberta Owls. (Unfortunately Dan’s presentation is now sold out. Tickets to these events are limited.) Check out the remaining talks below, starting March 23. They are all excellent speakers. I am particularly interested to hear Andrew Barnes on how he established the first breeding colony of Purple Martins in Calgary in many decades!

Please Note: Even though these are virtual seminars, they limit the number of spaces available. This will allow adequate time for the Q&A portion of the presentation. All presentations are through “ZOOM” and they suggest you sign up early to avoid disappointment.

Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite and are non-refundable. Click the Eventbrite link below each talk description to purchase tickets.

To keep informed about future events hosted by the Wild Bird Store, sign up to receive their monthly newsletter here.

Calgary Christmas Bird Count Final Results

Jan23

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

The counting and correcting is done, and here are the final results of the 2021 Calgary Christmas Bird Count (CBC). I helped out with the Feeder watchers again this year. Matthew Wallace coordinated the count and finalized the results. Lara Fitzpatrick created the spreadsheets that organized the data. It was a fun learning experience for us, and many emails were exchanged and many hours spent in Zoom meetings.

First, watch this summary video of the count results presented by Matthew:

The 2021 count was held on Sunday December 19. The temperature ranged from about -13 C to -10 C, with some light snow and winds of 10 to 20 kph. So the conditions were pretty good.

We had good participation this year, with 136 people out in the field (pretty much as many as we could manage with Covid protocols and the number of leaders we had) and 177 Feeder Watchers counting in their yards at 125 addresses (we can definitely add more Feeder Watchers).

Bohemian Waxwings seen on the 2021 Calgary CBC. *Photo by Arthur Wieckowski*

The final total on count day was 73 species, plus another four species seen during Count Week (December 16-22) but missed on Count Day. The total number of individual birds recorded was 71,468. (All numbers have been corrected to account for possible double-counting.)

Field Observers	Feeder Watchers
70 species	36 species
65,640 birds	5,828 birds

Below is the bird list and the number of each species reported:

Cackling Goose	4
Canada Goose	18,954
Trumpeter Swan	5
Tundra Swan	1
Wood Duck	3
Gadwall	1
Mallard	17,251
Green-winged Teal	1
Canvasback	2
Redhead	18
Ring-necked Duck	5
Greater Scaup	2
Lesser Scaup	5
Harlequin Duck	4
Bufflehead	144
Common Goldeneye	554
Barrow’s Goldeneye	3
Hooded Merganser	2
Common Merganser	86
Ruddy Duck	1
Sharp-tailed Grouse	3
Gray Partridge	58
Ring-necked Pheasant	11
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)	1,450
Eurasian Collared-Dove	2
American Coot	1
Wilson’s Snipe	1
Sharp-shinned Hawk	4
Northern Goshawk	6
Bald Eagle	55
Rough-legged Hawk	6
Great Horned Owl	9
Snowy Owl	1
Northern Saw-whet Owl	1
Belted Kingfisher	3
American Three-toed Woodpecker	2
Downy Woodpecker	264
Hairy Woodpecker	41
Pileated Woodpecker	4
Northern Flicker	419
Merlin	24
Gyrfalcon	1
Northern Shrike	8
Blue Jay	138
Black-billed Magpie	2,529
American Crow	65
Common Raven	649
Black-capped Chickadee	2,218
Mountain Chickadee	7
Boreal Chickadee	7
Golden-crowned Kinglet	2
Red-breasted Nuthatch	199
White-breasted Nuthatch	114
Brown Creeper	17
American Dipper	3
European Starling	326
Townsend’s Solitaire	18
American Robin	82
Bohemian Waxwing	15,676
Cedar Waxwing	11
House Sparrow	7,394
Pine Grosbeak	79
House Finch	2,015
Common Redpoll	294
Hoary Redpoll	2
White-winged Crossbill	41
Pine Siskin	50
American Tree Sparrow	3
Fox Sparrow	1
Dark-eyed Junco	91
White-crowned Sparrow	1
White-throated Sparrow	9
Song Sparrow	2

Other: Sp./Slash/Hybrid	5

The four Count Week birds were Varied Thrush (a continuing backyard bird that failed to show on Count Day), a Killdeer seen in Griffiths Wood Park, a Prairie Falcon seen in the east end on December 18th, and a Greater White-fronted Goose reported and photographed on the Elbow River at Sandy Beach, also on December 18.

Some of the notable birds this year were the two swan species and the Ruddy Duck (all continuing at Carburn Park), the three Sharp-tailed Grouse seen in the Tsuut’ina Nation in the SW, a Wilson’s Snipe and Snowy Owl at Carburn, a White-crowned Sparrow in the Weaselhead, and a Gyrfalcon.

We also had one species that had never been reported in the 69 previous Calgary counts – a Fox Sparrow in the yard of one of our Feeder watchers. This brings our cumulative total of all species reported on Calgary CBC’s to 143.

Matt Wallace, the count coordinator, has used the data to create some very interesting maps. (The maps below, and many more, will be posted on the Nature Calgary site when they are all complete.)

The Count Circle is divided into Sections, and here you can see how many species were found in each Section, and how the geography of the city influences species density.

Calgary Christmas Bird Count data — Number of Species seen in each Section.

Due to the open water here, we get a lot of Mallards and Canada Geese overwintering. We also often have big flocks of Bohemian Waxwings in the winter. As a result, we tend to get really high numbers of total individual birds reported. This year, 71,468 individual birds were counted. This is one of the highest totals (and possibly the highest) of any of the CBC’s in Canada this year. It is far higher than the totals for the Edmonton or Toronto counts, for example.

Below is a map that shows all the Feeder Watcher addresses (the white dots). Some areas have quite a few, but we can definitely use more!

A Black-capped Chickadee photographed by a Feeder Watcher, Calgary, December 19, 2021. *Photo by Raman Brar*

It’s interesting to look at some individual species. Bald Eagles:

Bald Eagle, Calgary, December 19, 2021. *Photo by Arthur Wieckowski*

The Eagles are concentrated along the lower stretches of the Bow River, where they feed mostly on sick or injured Mallards.

Here is the Mallard map:

Note how closely the Mallard distribution mirrors that of Bald Eagles. Mallards rest on the river, and go out to farmer’s fields to feed. There was also a huge concentration of 6,000 birds in the bit of open water at the northeast corner of Elliston Lake. Perhaps this is a safe place for them to rest, where there are fewer eagles around to prey on them than along the Bow.

The Canada Goose numbers were even higher than the Mallard numbers, with a similar distribution.

Black-billed Magpies are probably the most visible bird in Calgary, as they are found in all habitats and are very vocal. Many residents find them too aggressive and noisy to be likeable, but they are fascinating, beautiful, and intelligent birds. Like other urbanophiles (American Crows, House Sparrows, House Finches, and Rock Pigeons for example), they are doing very well in the urban environment.

The total number of Magpies reported on the CBC continues on a long-term upward climb:

As in the Magpie example above, we can use the CBC data to produce graphs of long-term trends of the overall results and of the numbers of individual species. The next graph shows that the number of participants and party-hours has steadily increased over time, as has the total number of birds recorded, but the number of species seen each year has plateaued.

The 73 species we had this year is the third-highest total ever, but it is line with a pretty flat graph since the mid-1980’s:

Below is an interesting graph that shows the number of Sharp-tailed Grouse reported. We had three this year, and three in 2016. But that’s it for the last twenty-plus years. They used to be found on Nose Hill and other areas at the city’s edge. But Nose Hill is now surrounded by development and the city has expanded to most edges of the Count Circle.

Sharp-tailed Grouse, Tsuut’ina Nation, Calgary, December 21, 2021. *Photo by Chris Durtnall*

The results of the Calgary Count and several other nearby CBC’s were presented at the January meeting of Nature Calgary’s Bird Study Group. The meeting was recorded, and a replay will soon be available on the Nature Calgary site here.

The next Calgary CBC will be on Sunday December 18, 2022. If you haven’t taken part before and are interested in participating, either as a Field Observer or a Feeder Watcher, email me at birdscalgary[at]gmail.com.

Many thanks to Matt Wallace for all his hard work in organizing the count and producing the maps, to Lara Fitzpatrick, who created the spreadsheets that captured all the data, and to the photographers.

Here is a link to an article about the Calgary Count results on CBC news, including a video interview.

Be sure to subscribe to Matthew’s Citizen Blitz channel on YouTube to keep informed about upcoming citizen science events in Calgary – and to see more great nature videos!. You can also follow him on Twitter (atcitynatureyyc) and on Instagram (atcitizenblitz).

Birds Calgary

A birding blog for Calgary, Alberta and area

Tag Archive | calgary birds

Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2023

Register to participate now!

Update on the City Nature Challenge

Help Calgary to reach its CNC goals this weekend!

Wanted: Plant, fungus, insect, and bacteria experts!

Lights Out For Migration!!

Help migrating songbirds by keeping our night skies dark.

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

Register Now For the Calgary Christmas Bird Count 2022!

Vote for Calgary’s Official Bird!

Wild Bird Store Speaker Series Begins March 16

Calgary Christmas Bird Count Final Results

Register to participate now!

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