Monday, December 29, 2008

Christmas Bird Count

I was in charge of the Heber Valley CBC this year. It's been years since one has been held in the Heber Valley. I was happy to organize it, and it was a great day. I only have a few picutes, but they are all at work, and I'm at home. So it's just a day of words.

Because the Heber Valley is a mountain valley, when the weather is stormy, it makes it hard to get to. And we had been having storms the week prior to the count on Saturday. But the day of, the weather was beautiful; cold but beautiful. One of the counters started his day at 6 am to look for owls. He said it was -2 F. Brrr.

We didn't have huge numbers of people show to count, but those that did were excited and enthusiastic. Most were new to the CBC. Everyone seemed to have a good time, which is important when outside all day in below freezing temps. One team found three uncommon species for this area. Very cool.

I didn't assign myself to an area with another group, but decided to fill in a few areas that might not get covered. While on my way to pick up the park truck I stopped to look at a bird perched at the very tippy top of a bare branch. Holy cow, it looked like a shrike. We do have them in the area, but I've never seen one up there. When I put my scope on him, I found it was a Northern Shrike. Even cooler! They are even less common than the loggerhead!

I am still working on tallying the numbers and species seen, but so far it looks pretty respectable. Not huge numbers like from some of our bird refuges, but not bad. And this being essentially the first year, it was good to just get out there and see what we could find.

Lots of good birds, beautiful weather, and great people. Not a bad day.

1 comment:

Deejbrown said...

"Lots of good birds, beautiful weather, and great people. Not a bad day." Sounds perfect to me. Congrats on a successful CBC, at all levels!