Up For The Count Birders Join National Effort To Check Up On Chickadees And Other Feathered Friends

Bird cliches roost in one’s brain during a morning in the field with Shirley Sturts and Theresa Potts. Birds of a feather flock together. Eyes like an eagle.

Two birds in the bush … Are gone.

“They flew into the woods,” said Potts, after hearing bush-bound chickadees from the passenger seat of Sturts’ pickup.

“She has good ears,” said Sturts, who has good eyes. She soon spotted eight black-capped chickadees flying out of the trees toward a ranch house.

Sturts, who’s taken part in Inland Northwest Christmas Bird Counts for decades, organized Sunday’s outing. The Audubon Society’s bird counts take place nationwide within selected 15-mile-diameter circles. They must be done between Dec. 18 and Jan. 3, so Sunday was the last day to check out the avian action.

The day began with biscuits and gravy, and would end with pizza. After breakfast, 14 volunteers headed out into seven different areas. Their circle, centered on Athol, stretched from Spirit Lake on the west to Bayview on the east.

They traveled by foot and wheel and boat. They carried a 60-species checkoff list, copies of the Unusual Bird Report Form and a map.

“Remember when we got lost last year?” mused Jan Severtson, who was there with husband Herb. “We got all turned around.”

The newest birder in the bunch was Todd Holcomb, a Coeur d’Alene High School student. He worried that he wouldn’t be able to identify what he saw. Kris Buchler assured him he’d be helpful in simply finding them.

“Novice birders are good at spotting birds,” she said.

Talk turned to the ever-exciting notion of finding the unexpected, the out-of-place or out-of-season. Kildeer and snipe, for example, were rarities discovered on this year’s Christmas count at Coeur d’Alene.

“There was the time we saw the hawk owl out at Cheney,” Buchler recalled. “People from all over the country were there, wandering around the (Eastern Washington University) campus, asking, `Did you see the hawk owl?”’

Sturts and Potts would have settled for seeing a less uncommon owl as they started their rounds in the Hoodoo Valley, west of U.S. Highway 95.

“I’m always looking for a barn owl in this barn,” Sturts said as she lifted her binoculars toward a decrepit building.

A train blew by, pickups rumbled, dogs barked. Still, the two birders had luck.

“There’s a raven going over - there’s one, two, three, four ravens,” said Sturts.

“The raven has a wedge-shaped tail,” she explained. “If it’s a crow it has a square tail. You usually see crows in town.”

A northern flicker landed in a bare treetop. The chunky brown woodpecker looks like a misplaced Christmas ornament.

There’s chattering nearby.

“That’s a squirrel,” Potts said. “But there’s something else, listen. Is that a Steller’s jay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Sturts replied. “That’s a big bird.”

The Christmas Bird Count documents the numbers and kinds of birds that live in an area. The Audubon Society also does a spring migration count to get the passers-through. In the summer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducts breeding bird surveys.

Assembled, that information provides a big picture of how bird populations are faring. But any little piece of the puzzle, such as Sunday’s count, may not show much at all.

“This year we’re not seeing the finches,” said Sturts. “I think it has to do with food supply … and reproduction.”

Sturts hoped to find unfrozen water and, with it, a mallard or two. She pulled out her heavy artillery - a big spotting scope - and the women crunched through the snow toward a stream that burbled between Granite and Kelso lakes.

It was a picture-perfect spot. But Sturts saw no flutter, Potts heard no chirps.

Sturts puckered her lips and mimicked the single-note whistle of the pygmy owl. She hoped that would attract chickadees, which might try to mob the predator and drive it away.

But the whistle disappeared in the cold air without a response, and the birders’ boots crunched back to the pickup.

Idaho headline: Birders go up for the count

This sidebar appeared with the story: THE COUNT The National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count was started in 1900 by 27 conservationists. They were protesting the annual “side hunt,” which was a contest to see who could shoot the most birds and animals on Christmas Day. About 1,700 separate counts were conducted nationwide this year. This year, for the first time, participants can enter their results via an Internet site, so the information is available to the public within days instead of months of being gathered. The address is http://birdsource.cornell.edu/ Inland Northwest birders are also communicating via computer using a list serve, a sort of bulletin board in which messages are sent directly to their e-mail boxes. To sign up for that service, send e-mail to majordomo@uidaho.edu. In the text of the message, write: subscribe inland-nw-birders (with your e-mail address here).