If you would like to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count Feb. 12 to 15 but might be feeling a little unsure of yourself, Pilchuck Audubon Society makes it easy to find your comfort zone.
PAS offers free two-hour training sessions that cover why the count is important, how to count and record, how to report your numbers, and the basics of identifying the most common feeder and backyard birds.
Leader Alan Mearns will lead one session and include a quick tutorial on how to get the most out of your binoculars.
The first class is from 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 6 at the Edmonds Wildlife Habitat &Native Plant Demonstration Garden Willow Creek Hatchery, 95 Pine St.
The second class is from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 7 at the Stillaguamish Conference Room, Arlington Public Works office, 154 W. Cox St.
For more information on the Edmonds event, call Susie Schaefer, 425-771-8165. For more on the Arlington event, email Terry Nightingale at vice-president@pilchuckaudubon.org or Pam Myers at pilchuckaudubonmail@gmail.com.
By the numbers: Record highs for 17 species and ties for five others were tallied in the annual Christmas Bird Count in the greater Everett/Marysville area on Jan. 1, according to compiler Scott Atkinson. The total individual bird count was about 40,000, down from 44,059 birds in the 2015 count.
Birders, who numbered a record 125, identified 140 species, possibly the second highest of the 40-plus counts in the state. Feeder/private property counters increased to 52; field observers were 73. This year the bird-counting groups covered 126 miles on foot and 670 by car. They had clear weather from 18 to 42 degrees.
Here are some other highlights:
Feeder watchers in Maryville spotted the largest share (65) of the all-time high of 152 Anna’s hummingbirds.
Josh Adams and Donald Erickson spent 6½ hours and traveled four miles down the sloughs to Otter Island and back, recording 32 species, including a spotted sandpiper.
For the first time, the city of Everett had the highest total species count of all territories within the CBC circle. A five-birder team counted 87 species; feeder counters M. Rairdin, Matt Freed, Mary Ann Sudkamp, Kinuko Noborikawa and Melissa Negretti added two more species for 89 on the day. The field watchers saw five orange-crowned warblers, a record-tying 11 for the CBC, a record that had stood since 1995.
Kayaker Patty Barton and walkers Jon and Kathy Houghton covered Jetty Island and found 39 species, including five semipalmated plovers, 15 sanderlings and a short-eared owl. One group covered Hat Island and the waters offshore. A record 51 species were found, including 13 brown creepers.
Raptors were up in numbers, including 116 bald eagles.
Three soras were spotted for the fourth time in 21 years, best in the state. Most field guides don’t show soras wintering this far north, Atkinsons said.
Thanks to a windless, starry night with a decent moon, owls were well represented, with five species and 26 individuals in 16 hours of owling.
“Our count benefitted from great participation and talented counters and also another lucky break on weather, probably the two most important factors in most of the record-high counts,” Atkinson said.
“We did have another very warm, dry summer during 2015, so this once again probably helped many resident species as well as those nesting to our north.
“Still, the picture on climatic changes are less clear this time around than in past years, given exceptional dryness, fires and other negative factors that could have worked against some of our wintering birds,” he said.
Congratulations to the birdwatchers and to Scott Atkinson for tackling the huge job of compiling the numbers.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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