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2024 Skagway CBC -- Saturday, 21 December
Summary
Our CBC happened bit closer to Christmas than usual, on 21 December 2024. We came out of cold snap on count day, which made the first 3 days of count week seem wintery, and the last 3 days seem melty.
On count day, temperatures at sea level ranged from 28F to 36F, but got down to 10F at the Klondike Hwy pass. Snow depth had a similar pattern, with zero to 3 inches at sea level, and about 2 feet at the pass. The rest of environmental conditions, except winds, were consistent throughout the count area: clear in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon; no rain or snow; still waters frozen and moving waters mostly open.
Northeast winds lined up with the Skagway Valley, creating strong surface winds up to 30mph with gusts up to 43mph. In Nahku Bay (sheltered from the wind) and the Taiya Valley (not lined up with the wind) it was calm, with winds 0 to 3mph.
Eleven (11) birders participated, with 8 of them doing 2 types of data collection: a route and a feeder; 2 routes; or a feeder and owling. Six (6) routes were covered by 8 people, 6 feeders were watched by 7 people, and one person went owling. All data came from near sea-level execpt one hardy soul who made it up Klondike Highway to the pass.
We counted 20 bird species on count day, with 4 more seen during count week: Bohemian Waxwing, Black-backed Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch and an Owl not identified to species. All of the birds were our regular winter residents or species that seem to show up every few years. No new birds or rare birds for our CBC list this year.
The total number of individual birds was only 522, on the low side for us but in-line with some other spare years in the past when we had relatively low participation.
- Elaine
Species table, participants list, and links to data are below photos.
glassy calm water at Nahku Bay beach (photo by Betsy Albecker)
At Klondike Highway pass (photo by Wendy Anderson)
Results by route and feeder
Results by route and feeder
* How count day number of species calculated:
Each species counts once,
"genus, sp." counts only if no species present,
forms do not count,
hybrids do not count,
"cw" birds do not count (but will be included
in the week total)
cw = count week US = unusual species
hyb = hybrid RB = rare bird
HC = high count (unusually high number of individuals)
LC = low count (unusually low number of individuals)
Participants
Participants
and count week contribution from Kim Burnham
--- 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
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