Overview:
The 57th Annual Christmas Bird Count took place in Athol last Saturday, with over 40 birders and a dozen "feed watchers" participating. Nearly 6,500 individual birds across 56 species were tallied, which was lower than the usual 60-70 species due to a cold snap at Thanksgiving. A new species of duck, the gadwall, was spotted. The event was held in conjunction with the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count.
ATHOL – Nearly 6,500 individual birds across 56 species were tallied during last Saturday’s 57th Annual Christmas Bird Count, according to Athol Bird & Nature Club President David Small.
More than 40 birders took to the woods and fields of North Quabbin to participate in the count, said Small, along with a dozen “feed watchers.”
The area covered during the annual event, said Small, is a 15-mile diameter circle centered on Athol, and included Royalston, Warwick, New Salem, Orange, Petersham, Phillipston, and parts of Templeton and Winchendon. The outing was done in conjunction with the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count.
“We always have a pretty reliable group of folks, but we always welcome new people,” he added.
“You just never know; you keep doing this long enough you’ll always find something.”
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The number of species identified, said Small, “Is a little bit low for us. We’d like to get at least 60, and we’ve had as many as 70 species in different years. The cold snap we had at Thanksgiving really froze out a lot of the water areas and we missed a whole lot of ducks we might ordinarily get. We had no common loons and no common merganser (duck).”
Small was pleased to reveal that a new species of duck not seen during the count in years past was spotted on Saturday.
“That was a gadwall. It’s very similar to a black or mallard, but it has very distinctive plumage,” he said. “You just never know; you keep doing this long enough you’ll always find something. That was seen in Orange, on the Millers River. It was found by John Skinner and Josh Rose.”
There was another bit of good news for bird lovers, said Small.
“Chris Coyle and Dave Cass had 30 evening grosbeaks in a flock in Phillipston,” he said. “That harkens back to what we used to see in the 70s. We haven’t seen evening grosbeaks in those numbers since then, so it was quite unusual….They used to be very common when we were kids, but they haven’t been around much at all in the last couple of decades.”
Several flocks of pine siskins, also part of the finch family, were also spotted, said Small.
Small said a complete report will be submitted to the National Audubon Society when all the data is in. Small actually got his count started a couple of days early with an unexpected visitor to his Pleasant Street home.
“I had an immature Cooper’s hawk that went through an upstairs bathroom window and wound up sitting on the bathroom floor,” he explained. “He was unharmed. I looked him over pretty good and he was bright-eyed and looked okay; nothing broken. We let him go out the back and he flew off happily.”
This year, for the first time, the Christmas Bird Count Walk & Solstice Celebration was held Saturday morning at the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust in Athol.
“I did a brief overview of the Christmas Bird Count and I had some specimens from the Bird & Nature Club,” Small said. “I had a blue jay and a kingfisher and sapsucker that I brought with me and told some stories about each bird. Then we went out around the Mount Grace Skyfields Arboretum and saw a few species. The kids actually spotted a bald eagle flying overhead, which was great.”