Hamilton Christmas Bird Count is a Boxing Day tradition

Species tally collects important information that sheds a light on local populations and trends, so shake off that turkey coma and get out to look for birds.

The holidays are fast approaching, and with that, some glorious traditions. Some recent, like the Christmas tree lighting in Gore Park. Some much older, like Christmas decorations at Dundurn Castle.

But did you know that there is a 100-plus year-old Boxing Day Tradition in our city, that doesn’t involve gifts or food?

It’s called the Christmas Bird Count.

This is an annual event where you sign up, are assigned an area, and then spend Boxing Day walking around that area counting species of birds. All in the name of science!

Rob Porter is the bird study director with the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, which coordinates the count. He explains that the Christmas Bird Count “has been going since 1921, and the club was founded in 1919, so almost the whole time we’ve been around.”

It was started by the precursor to the Audubon Society in the U.S. “It was a bit of a reaction to the extinction of the passenger pigeon,” Porter says. “Someone got the idea that, instead of going out and shooting them, maybe we should count them instead.”

Hamiltonians soon picked up the call, with the first count here consisting of just two intrepid birders trying to cover the whole area.

Miraculously, Porter says they still have the data for all but a few of the counts. “The more recent ones are available online, but the older ones still need to be digitized.”

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You might wonder who is using the data, and how they’re using it. “Basically, anyone working on bird science,” explains Porter. “It’s open data. So ecologists, conservationists, a range of people use it. Of course, any individual year or sets of years is not that big a deal, but when you get into trends of decades following a fairly standard protocol, you can glean a lot out of that data, like what is missing or what is suddenly back.”

For instance, some birds that were relatively uncommon in Hamilton in years past have now become very common.

“We’ve seen in our circle the rise of the Carolina wren. They’re a residential bird that doesn’t migrate, and they make themselves pretty obvious. We know people will identify them. We have a bit of a nursery of Carolina wrens in this area.”

The count also has tracked some dramatic trends in the bird population. “A number of years ago, bald eagles wouldn’t have shown up on the survey at all.” Now the study needs to set rules around counting so that the eagles – and other raptors that can travel great distances in search of food – don’t get double counted.

The Hamilton study takes place on Dec. 26 and consists of a 15-mile-wide circle with the centre at Dundurn Castle. Within that circle individuals or teams are assigned a zone to walk and count as many birds as they can in a day.

People can get involved by going to the Christmas Bird Count page on the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club website. The form asks which count you’d like to be part of (HNC manages three different counts based on geographic region and date), and a bit of personal information about you as a birder.

If you’re within the circle, the form even asks if you’d just like to count at your backyard feeder.

How much experience do you need to join the count?

“For feeder counts, not much. For urban zones, if you’re just walking around, there generally aren’t a lot of species. If there’s anything you can’t identify, if you can bring a camera with you and bring it in and say ‘I can’t identify this,’ we’ll help you,” explains Porter.

The rise of smartphones and everyone having a camera in their pocket has made the count much easier to organize and has helped with bird identification, opening up the count to people who may not have felt comfortable participating before. If you’re just going to be spending Boxing Day full of turkey and napping on the couch, why not spend a day in the fresh air, contributing to a data set that goes back over 100 years? I know the good folks at Hamilton Naturalists’ Club would love to have you along. I suspect the birds would appreciate it, too.