More than 50 members and friends went scouting for birds in their backyards and beyond Saturday as part of the Athol Bird and Nature Club’s 54th annual Athol Circle Christmas Bird Count.
In all, they counted 10,495 birds of 59 species during a 24-hour period for the annual event sponsored by the National Audubon Society.
Athol Bird and Nature Club President Dave Small reported warm temperatures leading up to Saturday melted any previously frozen ponds, boosting waterfowl diversity. A snow goose was seen with a large flock of Canada geese at Hunt’s Field in Orange/New Salem, only the third time in the count’s history.
While Lake Mattawa hosted bufflehead, ring-necked duck, common and hooded mergansers, Lake Rohunta yielded a pair of greater scaup for only the fourth time in count history, according to Small.
Orange Municipal Airport’s open habitat drew birders from around the region last week as two northern shrikes put on a show near Jumptown, only to be absent on the day of the count. Among the birds that did show on Saturday was a female northern harrier.
A record number of feeder watchers participated, with 24 reports coming in from across the count area. Feeder counters tallied 1,220 individual birds of 30 species. According to Small, the highlight from this subset was a gray catbird in South Athol. The catbird has been feeding on a bumper crop of winterberry Ilex verticillata, a native shrub.
Frank Chapman and 26 other conservationists initiated the Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in 1900 as a way of promoting conservation by counting, rather than hunting, birds on Christmas Day. Some counts have been running every year since then and the counts now happens in more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Here are the results of the Athol Bird and Nature Club’s bird count: snow goose 1, Canada goose 223, American black duck 45, mallard 121, ring-necked duck 14, greater scaup 2, bufflehead 2, hooded merganser 31, common merganser 298, wild turkey 70, common loon 2, bald eagle 12, northern harrier 2, sharp-shinned hawk 3, cooper’s hawk 3, red-shouldered hawk 2, red-tailed hawk 14, ring-billed gull 23, rock (dove) pigeon 515, mourning dove 443, great horned owl 3, saw-whet owl 8, belted kingfisher 6, red-bellied woodpecker 64, downy woodpecker 185, hairy woodpecker 56, northern flicker 1, pileated woodpecker 8, blue jay 1440, American crow 121, common raven 22, black-capped chickadee 760, tufted titmouse 431, red-breasted nuthatch 20, white-breasted nuthatch 223, brown creeper 9, Carolina wren 35, winter wren 2, golden-crowned kinglet 15, eastern bluebird 207, American robin 1010, gray catbird 1, northern mockingbird 2, starling 951, cedar waxwing 441, yellow rumped warbler 1, American tree sparrow 24, field sparrow 2, song sparrow 15, white-throated sparrow 52, dark-eyed junco 1178, northern cardinal 139, red-winged blackbird 6, purple finch 2, house finch 143, American goldfinch 698, and house sparrow 385.