Sand Ridge birders log ‘distressing’ trends
Avid spotters note declining avian populations, though not all news is bad
It sounds like a nice, friendly activity.
Get a bunch of friends together and spend a day around the holidays counting birds.
Then record and compile the information about what was spotted within a 7.5 mile radius.
The project even has a wholesome sounding name — “The Christmas Bird Count,” like something folks would do on the Hallmark Channel before breaking into a Christmas carol or two.
It truly is a nice, friendly activity, but there is more to it than that.
It’s also an important — some might say historic — activity, not only on a local and state level, but on a national level as well. This is serious stuff.
The Sand Ridge Audubon Society in the Calumet City/South Holland area sent approximately a dozen parties on New Year’s Eve day to do some counting and compiling. Toward the end of January, lead compiler John Elliott will send information the Sand Ridge groups collected about the number and species of birds to the National Audubon Society for its massive database.
In the coming months, the national group will announce its findings and analyze trends.
Elliott has been the lead compiler at Sand Ridge for 10 years, but has decades more of experience counting birds. He suspects this year’s count is going to be on par with trends from the last 40 years nationwide.
“Doing this is pretty meaningful, but we have learned over the years that the news has been pretty distressing,” he said. “Over the last 30-40 years, the numbers have declined tremendously. Not all species have declined by any means, but that’s the overall trend.”
He said the decline has been worse in small birds.
“Some larger birds, such as raptors, hawks and eagles have done well,” Elliott said. “And waterfowl have done well. But the smaller birds have declined dramatically.”
He has seen some interesting numbers over the years on the local and state level.
Bald eagles love to flock to Illinois in the winter and the state is second to Alaska in the amount of eagles that populate during the cold months.
“Even compared to Michigan, even compared to Wisconsin,
Illinois (wins out),” Forest Preserve District of Will County program coordinator Jess McQuown said.
Elliott said that wasn’t always the case.
“To see a bald eagle in the ’70s, when I started, it was like something to shout and holler about,” he said of the rarity of seeing the eagles in that era. “Now we have a number of nests just in Cook County and the surrounding area.
“A lot of that has to do with the elimination of pesticides.”
He added that peregrine falcons are back nesting in Chicago and snow geese sightings are increasing, mainly in central Illinois but throughout the state as well.
Sand Ridge has been doing the Christmas Bird Count for more than a half a century and it’s been 122 years for the National Audubon bird count.
According to a news release from Sand Ridge, the value of these counts is “to provide population data for use in science, especially conservation biology. The CBC is the longest running citizens science survey in the world.”
Elliott said typically the volunteers compile species numbers in the high 60s and low 70s in the area, but the actual number of birds varies from year to year.
“Some years you find huge flocks of pigeons and starlings and Canada geese, and some years you don’t,” he said “And you count them all. You count the native, nonnative, whatever you find throughout the area.
“It’s a massive amount of data we’re dealing with.”
Sand Ridge is independent of the National Audubon Society but is active in wider efforts to save birds and other environmental issues. It will offer several programs and talks at the Sand Ridge Nature Center, 15891 Paxton Ave. in South Holland in the coming months.