CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNT (CBC) AT RUTHVEN PARK
December 14, 2003

Toward the end of the 19th Century in many parts of
North America the Christmas Season was celebrated with a ‘traditional’ Christmas bird hunt – people would go out into the countryside and shoot as many birds as they could. As an alternative to this, in 1900 the U.S. Audubon Society started the first Christmas Bird Count to encourage people to look at birds rather than shoot them. The practice has spread widely since then: the first year there were counts in 26 localities (2 in Canada); now there are hundreds of them spread throughout Canada and the United States even reaching (on a lesser scale) into Mexico and Central America.

Count areas are set out as 24.1-km diameter circles. Observers are organized to search particular parts of that circle counting all the birds they can find. Each count lasts one calendar day and takes place within two weeks of Christmas.

The CBC for this area is organized by John Miles of the Haldimand Bird Observatory (Ruthven’s banding station is part of this organization). The count circle is centred on the town of Fisherville. My particular part of the circle is bordered by the Grand River on the west, Highway 3 on the south, and an arc stretching from east of Windecker Road to the confluence of Indiana Road and the river. (Thus most of Ruthven Park’s lands are in ‘my’ count area.) The area is a mosaic of agricultural fields, large and small forest plots (usually associated with sloughs), scrub areas (usually associated with fence rows or old fields) and urban areas (the town of Cayuga).

I organized the count by separating it into 2 parts: the town itself (which board member Jim Smith and his wife covered – cruising through town checking out all the feeders) and ‘all the rest’. This latter part I covered accompanied by two novices from Hagersville, Karl and Max King. We set out at 8:00 AM in a fairly heavy falling snow to walk a route that would take us from Ruthven Mansion, along the river to Town Line, along Town Line to Brooks Road (looping around on the railway line) and then back to the Mansion through the Ruthven forests, following the Grand Valley Trail. Later we would drive to Brooks Road and the Amtrak railway line and walk another loop out toward Windecker Road through the fields and along forest edge.

Between the 5 of us, we observed over 800 birds of 35 species. In town the most numerous bird was the American Goldfinch – Jim counted 112 of them: a testament to the importance of bird feeders!

Winter birding in open country tends to be a ‘feast or famine’ affair: you can go quite a way without encountering much of anything and then suddenly there are many! And so it was with us. Although the river was open we did not see much along it. However, between the railway line and Town Line in the flats along the river we came upon an unusually large mixed flock of seed eating birds: at least 120 Dark-eyed Juncos, 40 plus American Tree Sparrows, 17 Northern Cardinals and 10 plus American Goldfinches. We spread out and walked slowly, flushing the birds ahead of us – trying to get an accurate count. Later, working our way back through the forest (where we saw very little) to Ruthven we emerged into an old soya bean field and came upon a huge flock of Wild Turkeys (78 to be exact). En masse they turned and ran for the protective woods. When we came upon their tracks leading into the bush we could not find any sign of them – how can such large birds disappear so completely?

Other noteworthy birds we tallied were: an Eastern Tufted Titmouse (seen at the feeder that we maintain through the winter at the banding lab at Ruthven); a Hermit Thrush (along the railway line between Town Line and Brooks Road – eating sumac berries); and a Short-eared Owl (seen over some fields between Brooks Road and Windecker Road – it had been scared up by a passing Rough-legged Hawk). [On the whole, the Fisherville CBC yielded 95 species (and 4 others that were seen during the week of the count). One of these was exceptional: a vagrant from the west, a Gray Flycatcher. The National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America notes that it is a “regular migrant on California coast” – it should have been in Mexico. The bird was last seen off Indiana Road on the west side of the Grand River. It was only the fourth record for this bird in Ontario.]

Rick Ludkin,
Bird Bander, Ruthven Park
Chair, Cultural Landscape Committee
and Land Trust Board Member