‘Citizen science’: Birders see changing landscapes, climate in 125th annual count

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This article was published 31/12/2024 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

UXBRIDGE, Ont. – The birds may have thought that Geoff Carpentier, or at least the sound he was making, was one of their own.

Carpentier watched with his binoculars strapped to his chest as a banditry of chickadees, the collective noun for the small bird with mask-like markings, began to appear around him.

Carpentier was “pishing” – an imitation bird call and onomatopoeia that the chickadees recognized as an alarm bell.

As the birds descended on trees around Carpentier, the 75-year-old started to count. He noted 15 birds, adding them to the list of those he’d already seen earlier that morning, including harder-to-spot species such as great horned owls and a northern shrike.

Carpentier, who says he’s seen just shy of 5,000 bird species in his lifetime, may have seemed to be a solitary bird watcher on the back roads of Uxbridge, Ont., at the northeastern edge of the Greater Toronto Area. But on this overcast December morning, he was one of thousands of other people across North America taking part in a 125-year-old tradition called the Christmas Bird Count.

“Doing this count… allows me to, first of all, get outside and join nature, but also to contribute to citizen science, to sort of gather the data that someday people are going to be able to use for a good study,” said Carpentier, who’s taken part in annual counts since the 1970s.

“There are more people interested in the count now. There’s a lot of enthusiasm and people are excited about getting out and enjoying nature.”

The annual count is billed as one of North America’s longest-running citizen science projects, offering valuable long-term insights into bird population trends. The program is overseen nationally by Birds Canada and the results help to underpin some major reports about Canada’s bird population, including the federal government’s State of Canada’s Bird 2024 report.

The main threats to birds in Canada, the report suggests, include habitat loss, climate change, outdoor cats, window collisions and pollution.

The first count began in 1900 when an American ornithologist proposed it as an alternative tradition to popular holiday bird hunts. What started with 27 people, including at least one person in Toronto, has now grown to around 475 counts in Canada between Dec. 14 and Jan 5, attracting thousands of volunteer bird census-takers, says Birds Canada, a national conservation group.

Stu MacKenzie, a director at Birds Canada who as a volunteer helps oversee the count in Long Point Provincial Park and Hamilton, says it’s “as much a tradition as turkey dinner.”

“It gives everybody an excuse to get outside and it becomes a community building experience to get those networks of people outside… and then promoting bird life that’s in the area during the holiday season, when people tend to have a little bit more time to pay attention,” said MacKenzie, who described birding as a “gateway drug” to a deeper interest in nature.

Carpentier said his interest in bird watching had been piqued at age 13, when he spotted a northern cardinal near his childhood home in Petawawa, Ont. At the time, he says the sighting was unusual enough that it earned him a spot in the newspaper. Now, the species has expanded in Ontario, with their increased abundance and breeding range driven in part by a warming climate.

Carpentier’s career with Ontario’s Ministry of Environment began in 1973 and included a stint as one of the first pesticide officers, helping to break ground on legislation and protections surrounding one of the era’s defining environmental issues, he said.

The pesticide DDT was restricted in Ontario in the 1970s, after its widespread use contributed to the collapse of the province’s bald eagle population.

Turkey vultures, on the other hand, which were rare in the 1970s, are now far more common in Ontario. Reasons for their population increase are not well known but are helped at least in part by an ample supply of food from roadkill that sometimes includes birds, another uniquely human influence.

As Carpentier drove to his next birding spot in a car with a vanity licence plate named after a bird, a group of starlings flew from the roadside into the sky. Since humans introduced them to North America from Europe in the late 19th century, starling populations have exploded to tens of millions, outcompeting some other native species while devouring animal feed and food crops, causing an estimated $800 million in economic damages annually in North America.

Carpentier admits he’s “bad” at retirement and continues to work as an ecotour guide and environmental consultant. Part of his work includes due diligence surveys for developers, giving him a front-row seat to how construction intersects with bird habitat.

He pointed to sprawling suburbs around the Greater Toronto Area where he says a “rapid and dramatic change” has unfolded in some parts. As subdivisions sprout up, birds are forced into small woodlots or the best bird feeders on the block.

‘We need to do this,” he said of housing development to accommodate a booming population. “My only frustration is that we seem to forget about nature.”

He wants to see more legislative requirements for developers to build wildlife-friendly green spaces into their plans.

“It’s not about not doing development, it’s about doing better and with an eye to helping nature.”

A local naturalist club helps organize the count in Uxbridge, dividing the township into tracts surveyed by either individual birders or small groups. In the tract beside Carpentier, Karen Vanderlee and Gary Patterson survey the countryside in a pickup truck.

“They’re beautiful. They’re perfect little creatures,” Vanderlee said of the birds.

She said it “hurts her heart” to think about farmland disappearing across parts of Ontario, with bird habitat going with it. She hopes the bird count, and other citizen science projects like it, help drive decision makers to better conservation action.

“I think to get anything done and to have impact with government, you need the studies,” said Vanderlee, a 67-year-old retired pharmacist.

“They’ll need the numbers and the statistics and hopefully, well, some people pay attention.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 31, 2024.