2012 CBC Summary

2012 Skagway CBC -- Saturday, 15 December

Thanks to everybody who participated in our count! Special thanks to Debbie Ackerman for hosting our after-count gathering!

SUMMARY

Our count day graced us with mild air temperatures (hovering just at freezing) and no wind. But overnight and early in the day we experienced a heavy, wet snow that built up to about 2 feet in depth by late morning. This created a hushed quiet and difficult travel on land, but also created excellent optical conditions over the bay waters.

We had 22 participants this year - 18 Skagway townfolk and 4 brave Yukoners. Seventeen field observers covered our circle by car, foot, power boat, snowshoe and ski. Six feeders were watched by 7 people, some of whom also went out in the field. Together we counted 1971 individual birds of 34 species on count day, and recorded 2 more species during count week.

The good open water conditions gave observers plenty of time to work on their identifications. Some relatively uncommon species were recorded, such as scaup, scoters, and Glaucous and Thayer's gulls. A new species, the Green-winged Teal (American), was documented for our count, and for our sub-region of upper Lynn Canal. A rare bird report was prepared.

On land, the town had recently been hosting 3 predators: a Northern Shrike, a Northern Goshawk, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk. The hawks were seen on count day, but the shrike was not seen during count week. Long-time feeder watchers had noted the effect of the predators upon the number of birds coming to their feeders. In the outlying areas with more cover, small birds numbers had seemed to be more normal. But the heavy snow blanketing our circle on count day created conditions in which many small birds were inactive.

We think these two local factors, recent predators in town and deep snow on count day, contributed to the somewhat low numbers recorded for many of our small land birds, including Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Dark-eyed Junco, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Steller's Jay and American Dipper. Two robins were seen on count day, out of a local flock of 8. Berry and cone crops seemed to be about average in abundance, and the regular harvesters were noted: Bohemian Waxwing, Pine Grosbeak, and White-winged Crossbill.

species list below - for detailed table of results, see "results by year" at bottom

--- view or download a PDF file of any specific year's results from 2003 to present: results by year

--- view or download a PDF file of multiyear summaries of Skagway CBCs: CBC multi-year results by decade