After a weeklong postponement due to the heavy snowfall in Homer in mid-December, the 125th annual Christmas Bird Count Day held on Dec. 21 saw about average numbers of bird species within the established “count circle.”
On Count Day, 29 field volunteers gathered at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center and divided into 11 teams before dispersing to identify and count all birds in their assigned areas within the Homer Count Circle, which is a 15-mile circle centered at the base of the Homer Spit.
In addition to the field volunteers, this year’s count welcomed seven feeder-watchers, or participants who watched their bird feeders throughout the day and recorded bird species sighted and the highest number of each species that came to the feeder.
While temperatures remained above freezing on Count Day, windy and rainy weather conditions in most areas made for challenging birding conditions. Kachemak Bay Birders member Dave Erikson, who has coordinated and compiled the results of Homer’s Christmas Bird Count for 48 consecutive years, noted in his report after the event that the weather during the count was also likely a contributing factor to lower bird numbers reported in some areas, particularly upland, within the count circle.
Still, Erikson said that this year’s count results yielded a “very respectable” total of 8,268 individuals of 64 species of birds. Previous count day species totals average in the mid-60s.
Thirteen species on Count Day were represented by only one individual bird, according to Erikson. An additional six species were also documented during the three-day “Count Week” period before and after Count Day.
The most numerous species sighted this year were mallard ducks, which regularly overwinter in Kachemak Bay in high numbers, with 3,022. Greater scaup, a medium-sized diving duck, came second with 1,490 sighted, followed by black scoters, a large sea duck, at 680. Both duck species are commonly found in Kachemak Bay.
In his report, Erikson attributed the higher numbers of waterfowl to an absence of ice cover due to recent mild temperatures along the northern shoreline of the inner bay.
Shorebirds were represented by 1,000 rock sandpipers and a lone dunlin.
Other birds of note, found in the uplands on the Homer Spit, included one Lapland longspur, two snow buntings and seven song sparrows. Most notably sighted were two great gray owls and two northern hawk owls, considered rare in Homer during the winter. The great gray owls were seen for the first time on the actual Count Day, after being sighted only twice during count weeks in previous years.
One Anna’s hummingbird was also spotted at a feeder in the main part of town, Erikson said. Anna’s hummingbirds in recent years have become a regular early winter visitor to Homer. One white-throated sparrow, generally considered rare in Homer, was also seen. White-throated sparrows have now been documented in low numbers in six of the last seven CBCs.
Compared to 2023’s count, Erikson said that the large flock of “thousands of red crossbills, white-winged crossbills and pine siskins” present during last year’s CBC have “largely moved on,” with “only a handful” of crossbills seen during this year’s count week and “a couple of small flocks” of siskins sighted on Count Day.
The Christmas Bird Count is an annual event, sponsored by the National Audubon Society, that takes place internationally including approximately 2,700 counts throughout the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean Islands, Mexico and Central America, and some locations in South America and the Pacific Islands, according to Erikson. Thirty-eight counts are held throughout Alaska; the count circle diameter is the same for every count location.
The CBC is the “largest and longest running citizen science event in the world,” Erikson said. Homer first participated in the CBC in 1960, and the event was held intermittently until 1973, after which it has continued annually until today.
Local sponsors for the Homer CBC included Kachemak Bay Birders, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
Find the full report from this year’s Christmas Bird Count on the Kachemak Bay Birders’ website at kachemakbaybirders.org/.
