When Charley Burwick first heard the snowy owl rumor, he decided it wasn't worth his time. It was risky business to drive a few hours to Kansas City, Mo., to catch a glimpse of a bird that could fly away at a moment's notice.
But as talk of the snowy owls' atypical prevalence in the United States continued to swirl among the birder community, Burwick, a Springfield, Mo., resident, started his car and joined those around the nation going to lengths to spot the white diurnal bird.
The snowy owls' descent from Canada cropped up on listservs for the Audubon Society's 112th annual Christmas Bird Count. The bird has come hunting for sustenance farther south in the United States, and participants in the annual count took notice, said the National Audubon Society's chief scientist, Gary Langham.
Whatcom County birdwatchers hauled their spotting scopes to Sandy Point, where the owls showed up. Unlike some parts of the country where the birds are rarely seen, they show up in large numbers in Whatcom County every few years.
From mid-December to Thursday, Jan. 5, avid birdwatchers, scientists and families bundled up and spent time tallying and identifying birds with one of Audubon's more than 2,200 "count circles" in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Central America, Antarctica and the Pacific Islands. A Bellingham group was among them.
Although official full reports will not be available until late spring or early summer, this year's mild weather has most likely left participants with fewer birds to count, according to Christmas Bird Count director Geoff LeBaron.
"The birds don't need to be concentrated, so they are much more dispersed," he said.
Each year, with a veteran counter as a guide, birdwatchers take a segment of their designated area and craft a list of which birds participants have spotted. The same locations are used each year to ensure the data is uniform, and the National Audubon Society compiles the counting circles' information.
"I don't think I've missed a year since 1986," said Burwick, who organizes the count circle in Missouri's Taney County, south of Springfield.
What started in 1900 as a way to stop a Christmas bird-hunting tradition has turned into the longest running wildlife survey in the world, according to Audubon.
It's the "granddaddy of citizen science," used by hundreds of scientific publications to identify endangered birds and track migration patterns that can indicate global climate change, said David Bonter, an ornithologist who has worked at Cornell University for 10 years.
During the past 40 years, data from the Christmas Bird Count shows more birds are found farther north, Bonter said. The federal Environmental Protection Agency used that shift in a 2010 report, "Climate Change Indicators in the United States," as evidence of global change in weather patterns.
"Birds are often thought of as an excellent indicator of the health of an ecosystem," said Langham, Audubon's chief scientist. "Where birds thrive, people prosper."
Volunteers for the Bellingham Christmas Bird Count on Dec. 18 counted three snowy owls, all on Sandy Point. Four were seen there Monday, Jan. 2, said Paul Woodcock, vice president of North Cascades Audubon Society.
Birders on local listservs over the past two weeks have reported 25 to 30 snowy owls on Boundary Bay, just across the Canadian border.
The snowy owl this winter has flown as far south as Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas in search of grub. There was a shortage in Canada — its typical home this time of year — of lemmings, the birds' main food source, Langham said.
The owls had a "bumper crop" over the past year, meaning they had lots of babies and not enough lemmings to feed on, he said.
The largest numbers of snowy owls are being reported in the Pacific Northwest, in addition to the Lake Superior area and in New England, Woodcock said.
"The biggest concentration seems to be here," he said. "They're down into Oregon and Idaho."
ABOUT THE BIRD COUNT
For more information on the Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count and what the data is used for, go to birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count.
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