Enthusiasts head out to count birds around Snohomish County

Published 11:24 pm Friday, December 28, 2007

Local bird experts plan to fan out across south Snohomish County today, looking for the winged creatures they love so much.

When they do, they will continue a national traditional that is more than a century old.

In the year 1900, already seeing a decline in bird populations, members of the National Audubon Society decided to stop hunting birds and start counting them instead.

“At the turn of the (last) century, all good ornithologists were good shots and good taxidermists,” said Mike Blackbird, president of the Pilchuck Audubon Society, part of the national group. “Today all you have to do is have a good pair of binoculars. It helps to have a good ear so you can understand calls.”

The information they collect in the annual Christmas Bird Count has been used to track the health and population of bird species across the country, including in Snohomish County.

The birding community did a count in north Snohomish County last Saturday, finding 113 different species, a number that is a bit lower than usual, Blackbird said.

Personally, Blackbird saw a red-breasted sapsucker and a merlin gull, two relatively rare finds in Snohomish County.

“There are always the unusual ones that you hope to see,” he said. “I don’t remember anything particularly unusual.”

Blackbird went out with Susie Schaefer, vice president of Pilchuck Audubon and a longtime Christmas bird counter.

“We did pretty good on the (number of) species, but boy we didn’t have very many,” Schaefer said.

She attributed it to cold, windy weather, but she added that there has been a general decline in the number of species and the quantity of birds during the 22 years that she has been doing the counts.

Development is eating away at the habitat that the birds need to survive, she said.

“We use to see ebbs and flows,” Schaefer said. “We don’t see very many upward bounds anymore. It’s just generally going down. That is what worries me.”

She usually looks for birds in the Marysville area, where she would find most of her birds on privately owned forest land. Now all of that land is gone, replaced with houses.

“Now one of my best spots is Haggen,” she said. The grocery store is next to Quil Ceda Creek, one of the last places in the city with decent bird habitat. “We found some good birds there but we really had to look for them.”

Local bird count figures are fed into a national report, Blackbird said. Volunteers usually chip in $5 to get a copy.

Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.