Unalaska Island's 19th consecutive Christmas Bird Count held Jan. 2 turned up one new bird species and recorded all-time-high counts of seven other species.
Our weather was cold, clear and calm, around 25 degrees Fahrenheit, with 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. The lakes were frozen over and the bays so calm that conditions were excellent for getting great counts of our wintering waterfowl flocks.
Twenty-one participants went out in eight field parties, walking and driving, to cover a combined 24 miles. Most of our parties worked along the coast with a few going after ptarmigan up higher. We also had three feeder counts.
Our tally this year was 8,436 individual birds of 45 species and one additional during count week. This was shy of our all-time high count last year of 51 plus four additional during count week, but a superb count nonetheless!
Two male canvasbacks in Captain's Bay gave us a new species for our Christmas Bird Count checklist! All-time high counts this year (followed by the previous high count) were an astonishing 164 marbled murrelets (73); 1,858 emperor geese (1,418); 36 red-necked grebes (32): 69 buffleheads (63) two northern shrikes (1); 131 common redpolls (116) and four dark-eyed juncos (2).
Despite the high numbers of marbled murrelets, we had only modest numbers of common murres and pigeon guillemots and not a single crested or whiskered auklet this year. Easterlies seem to bring those smaller alcids into our bays and we've had relentless westerlies so far this winter. Our bald eagle count was the second highest ever at 840; we had 878 during the winter of 2002-2003.
For more information, visit the National Audubon Society's website http://birds.audubon.org.
Many thanks to all our participants this year!
Unalaska Island Christmas Bird Count organizer Suzi Golodoff is the author of "Wildflowers of Unalaska Island."