From woodpeckers to ravens, Regina's Christmas bird sightings reveal trends

As trees mature in Regina, forest fires rage elsewhere and food sources beckon, bird populations shift and change and yield fascinating insights, says the organizer of this year's Christmas Bird Count.

Brett Quiring says Christmas Bird Counts have been taking place for decades, and have revealed the bird population has changed a lot in Regina since the 1950s and '60s.

"We have much larger trees and a greater variety of types of trees, so we have a lot more boreal birds than we would have had," he said, explaining as a result birds like nuthatches and chickadees have become much more common.    

"They live here year-round because the urban forest is is large enough to sustain them," said Quiring, who coordinates the bird count effort that's sponsored by Nature Regina.  

Ravens started popping up in the area around 2000, and those populations have also exploded. People used to shoot these birds, but the end of that practice has seen their numbers grow, while certain agricultural practices, like the disposal of livestock, has also been helpful to their population numbers, according to Quiring.

Outside of the city, snowy owls are a common sight on the treeless plains. Regina recorded more than 50 snowy owls last year, a record number, according to Quiring.

This year, there were a couple of rare bird sightings at Regina's Christmas Bird Count, with people spotting a black backed woodpecker and a wood duck amidst the usual suspects.

One or two sightings of a rare bird may be "neat," but these sightings don't tell bird watchers much on their own, as compared to trends, says Quiring.

For instance, bird watchers have seen more black-backed woodpeckers in the south, suggesting that something may have happened to change this bird's numbers, he said.

Black-backed woodpeckers thrive on forest fires, because they feed on wood-boring bark beetles that follow such fires. Quiring speculates that more fires have led to a growing population of woodpeckers and more heading further south.  

The National Audubon Society, that administers this count, has created an online tool that allows people to see how bird populations are changing, and where they are going, throughout North America.   

"Part of what this does is this allows us to you know to possibly get a better idea of where these birds are moving," Quiring explained of the annual count.

"If we can collect enough information through all of the thousands of counts in North America, we might be able to build a better model of what the birds are actually doing."