Anchorage Daily News

Nicole Sperbeck's bare hands were cold and stiff as she drove through South Birchwood on Sunday, and no wonder.

The windows of her SUV were rolled down and the moon roof was open. Temperatures in the 20s chilled the inside of the Denali Yukon, and a light snowfall dropped flakes on the front seat.

Sperbeck barely noticed. She was too busy keeping one eye on the road and the other on the sky above, looking for small black dots atop tall spruce trees.

The occasion was Eagle River's Christmas Bird Count, and like most of the bird-loving citizen scientists who take part in the annual Audubon Society project, Sperbeck accepted a little discomfort as part of the routine.

For more than a century, bird lovers have set aside a day in December to roam city streets, coastlines, hiking trails, fishing docks, parking lots, open water and even garbage dumps for the Christmas Bird Count.

In Alaska, where counts are held in places large (Anchorage) and small (Gustavus), resourceful birders do just about anything to get to where the ravens, eagles, chickadees and redpolls live.

In Seward, some climb into a boat and sail across a sometimes rocky Resurrection Bay with the hope of seeing a yellow-billed loon. In Kodiak, some might strap on a pair of snowshoes and hike up a slippery mountainside for a chance to spot a ptarmigan. In Unalaska, everyone battles with fierce winds and bitter cold for the prospect of spying a harlequin duck.

"They have to be hardy folks out here," said Suzi Golodoff, who organizes the count in Unalaska.

So do the birds. There's hardly any vegetation on the Aleutian Islands -- a few trees, not much else. Yet eagles, ravens, gulls and other species live there by hundreds if not thousands, finding a place to perch on the riggings of fishing boats and at the landfill.

This year's Unalaska count produced about 40 species. Anchorage's had 41. Mat-Su's had 32. Seward's had 66. Juneau's had 70. Gustavus's had 74. And Kodiak's had 77, allowing the island community to maintain its status as heavyweight champion of Alaska birding.

"It's been quite a few years that we've had the most," Kodiak count organizer Rich MacIntosh said, sounding proud as a peacock -- a bird not likely to make the list of any Alaska count.

Eventually, data from the counts -- which include the number of species spotted and the total number of birds seen -- will be posted on Audubon's Web site. As of Sunday evening, North American bird lovers had reported seeing more than 7 million birds during the one-day counts, and results are still coming in.

For 108 years, the Audubon Society has conducted Christmas Bird Counts and kept track of the results.

"It reveals trends," said Sirena Brownlee, the organizer of the Anchorage count, held Dec. 15. "Ten years ago, we weren't seeing so many starlings in Anchorage."

Each community chooses a day in December for its count. For Alaskans, that means limited daylight to spot birds. Not to mention uncooperative weather.

"Our count day was one squall after another," said Carol Griswold of Seward. The wind blew hard and the crew out in Resurrection Bay contended with 2-foot seas, "always at the wrong angle," Griswold said, making for tough viewing.

Kodiak's weather was so nasty -- no snow or rain, but howling, gusting winds -- it chased one of two boats back to shore.

"So our numbers were reduced because of the wind and that one boat not getting out where it wanted to go," MacIntosh said.

Given all that, the snow and cold that greeted Eagle River birders Sunday was downright pleasant.

Sperbeck, a law student at Gonzaga University, was taking part in her fourth Christmas Bird Count. She caught the birding bug when she took an ornithology class at Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania, came home for Christmas break and heard about the bird count. She and her mother, Janet, have since turned it into a tradition.

This year, Liesa Crowley, who works with Janet at the State Farm claims office, joined the Sperbecks for her first count. She sat in the back seat of the SUV with a thick stack of computer printouts, each showing a picture and citing characteristics of Alaska birds.

The three women spent five or six hours driving slowly through a handful of wooded South Birchwood neighborhoods, stopping often to listen for birds or to point binoculars through the open moon roof to scan treetops.

"We did it one year with a blind man who listened out the window," Janet said. He was able to identify species by their sounds, she said.

The Sperbecks and Crowley wound up spotting nine different kinds of birds -- about 450 or 500 in all, including 210 Bohemian waxwings and a single dark-eyed junco. And even with the windows down and the moon roof open, they were as happy as a lark -- another bird unlikely to show up on any Alaskan count.

"This is the perfect bird-watching vehicle," Crowley said. "Four-wheel drive, moon roof, heated seats, coffee-cup holders. The only way it could be better is if we could sprout wings."

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

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