Volunteers head out for ‘citizen science’ of annual bird count

As Christmas bird-counting weather goes, Saturday was hard to beat.

Clear skies, only a light breeze to sting the cheeks at dawn and temperatures that would top 50 before the sun began to sink.

But some still questioned the wisdom of getting up early to count birds on a cold December morning.

“That’s what my husband says as he rolls over and goes back to sleep,” Patty Marlett said, laughing. “It’s fun!”

About a dozen avid bird-watchers gathered at the Great Plains Nature Center as the sun rose Saturday for the annual Wichita Christmas Bird Count. They then fanned out throughout the city, each assigned quadrants in the quest to catalog as many bird species as they could spot.

It’s part of a national bird count conducted by the Audubon Society that’s been going on for more than 100 years, Kevin Groeneweg said. It’s the largest data set of its kind, he said, “a kind of citizen science thing.”

“Sometimes, conditions are pretty hard” for the annual count, Groeneweg said. But Saturday’s conditions were practically ideal.

“It’s been pretty mild, so we’re really hoping that a lot of the birds that might have been out of here by now are lingering,” he said.

In a good year, the Christmas count logs more than 100 species, though the figure is in the 90s most years.

The birders fanned out in a 15-mile radius centered on the “Keeper of the Plains” statue. Groeneweg and Mike Heaney walked Chisholm Creek Park next to the nature center, Groeneweg with a clipboard and binoculars at hand and Heaney toting a camera and binoculars.

They quickly spotted nine Canada geese, a great blue heron and five robins.

“What do we have here?” Heaney asked aloud as a flock of geese took flight.

After a few moments, he said, “those are cackling” geese. “The call was too high” to be Canada geese, their close, larger-bodied cousin.

Farther into the walk, Heaney halted as he peered through binoculars.

“Blue jays ... times three,” he said to Groeneweg.

The count means getting off the paved path at Chisholm Creek Park and onto wildlife trails down into thickets of brush and cattails and small gurgling streams and draws, wildlife footprints fresh in the damp soil.

Parks around Wichita with plenty of habitat, such as Pawnee Prairie, Chisholm Creek and Oak, commonly net plenty of songbirds, Groeneweg said.

The Big Ditch used to be fertile birding territory, Marlett said, “but now they mow it.”

Pete Janzen was logging a lot of sparrows as he and a partner walked small parks and residential areas along the Little Arkansas River.

“We expected a lot of warmer-weather species to be out (here), and they are,” he said as a flock of geese flew overhead.

Song sparrows and white-throated sparrows were all around. Even cedar waxwings were hanging around.

“That’s always a nice one to see,” Janzen said. “It’s been a good day to be out.”

By 5:30 p.m., the birders had counted 93 species – though they were gearing up to go out Saturday night and look for a few owl species.

Some uncommon findings: pine warblers, Le Conte’s sparrows and gray catbirds, according to Groeneweg. These species usually fly the coop earlier in the year but lingered because of mild temperatures, he said.

“Other than that, there were probably pretty typical numbers for waterfowl,” he said. “The count is getting so urban that some of the birds you find out in the country are getting pretty hard to come by. That makes things a little bit challenging.”

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 6:51 PM with the headline "Volunteers head out for ‘citizen science’ of annual bird count."