Grande Prairie Christmas Bird Count

This past Saturday (December 18th), I participated in the Grande Prairie Christmas bird count. You can read more about the Christmas Bird Count at this link: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

I’m rather far north, so only a few dozen hardy species can be found around here during December. These include chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, a variety of finches, Brown Creepers, grouse, owls, corvids, and raptors. The species I managed to find were: Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches, a Hairy Woodpecker, House Sparrows, House finches, hundreds of Bohemian Waxwings, Black-billed Magpies, an American Crow, Common Ravens, Blue Jays, and, to my surprise, a Northern Shrike.

I found the shrike right in the city, close to a bird feeder. They aren’t normally found in cities, as they prefer more open habitats. This one, however, did find a good source of food in the city. Shrikes are in the same order as songbirds (Passeriformes), but unlike most songbirds, they are predatory and will prey on small vertebrates. The shrike would have been interested in the sparrows at the feeder, rather than the bird seed. I’ve seen Merlins stalking bird feeders in my neighbourhood as well.

Shrikes lack the powerful legs that raptors possess. When raptors catch a large prey item, they can hold it in place with their talons and take bites of it while it’s secured like that. Shrikes have a different way of keeping their prey in place while they eat: they will impale it on a branch or thorn. Shrikes that catch more than they can eat at once will also cache (store) prey items by impaling them. So if you find a small bird or mouse impaled on a branch, you are likely in a shrike’s territory.

Northern shrikes are typically found in Alberta during the winter. Their breeding grounds are much further north, into the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Alaska, southern Nunavut, and northern Quebec and Ontario.

The end results for Grande Prairie have been posted at this link: https://everythinggp.com/2021/12/20/final-numbers-in-from-2021-christmas-bird-count/

A total of 30 species were counted, which is quite good for this part of the country.

I put my own counts on ebird, which is extremely useful for keeping track of bird sightings:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S99087922

https://ebird.org/checklist/S990879534

There was an American Robin reported, which is unusual but not unheard of this far north during winter. The odd one will stay up north if there’s a food source available. Below is a picture of a robin I found last year during December by Bear Creek: