Christmas Bird Count: a look back
Yarmouth was site of Nova Scotia’s first Christmas Bird Count in 1913
The Christmas Bird Count season begins Dec. 14. In the tricounty region, bird counts are scheduled for Dec. 14 (Brier Island), Dec. 15 (Barrington) and Dec. 16 (Yarmouth). To find a contact person for a count near you, go to: https://www.nsbirdsociety.ca/calendar.
Here’s some history on this annual initiative:
A Christmas tradition in some areas of the United States at the end of the 19th century was the “side hunt.” Hunters would choose sides, and each team would shoot as many birds as they could find in a day and put them in a pile. The team with the largest pile won. On Dec. 25, 1900, naturalists in North America, in an effort to conserve bird populations, held the first Christmas Bird Count in which people counted rather than shot every bird they could find. There were two Christmas bird counts in Canada that year, one at Scotch Lake, New Brunswick, the other in Toronto.
The first Christmas Bird Count in Nova Scotia was held 13 years later in Yarmouth by Harrison F. Lewis and E. Chesley Allen. On Dec. 23, 1913, they counted 103 birds of 12 species. Harrison Lewis was 20 years old and from Long Island, New York. He was probably attending Acadia University, where he graduated in 1917. Chesley Allen was a native of Arcadia in Yarmouth County and 31 years old. He was a teacher in the town of Yarmouth.
Regarding that day’s count, what is perhaps most interesting are the birds they did not see. Not a single gull or starling was counted. Today, herring gulls, great black-backed gulls and the European starling are super abundant in the town of Yarmouth. The absence of starlings on that first count is easy to explain. The European starling was first successfully introduced to North America in Central Park, New York City, in 1890. According to the late Robie Tufts in his book, The Birds of Nova Scotia, the first starling seen in Nova Scotia was not until 1915.
The absence of gulls is harder to explain. Tufts wrote that in 1906, the herring gull was common except in winter. In a pamphlet titled Annotated List of Birds of Yarmouth and Vicinity, Southwestern Nova Scotia published in 1915, Chesley Allen wrote the great black-backed gull was “irregular” along our coasts in winter. He said a breeding colony of 1,000 birds of this species was located at Lake George. Here the great black-backed gulls outnumbered the herring gulls 10-1. Still, the overall number of gulls was much less in 1913, for as Tufts wrote, the gulls, as well as other bird species, were heavily exploited by commercial interests for their feathers. It was only in 1918 that such activities became illegal.
Chesley Allen’s pamphlet gives interesting insights about the changes in bird populations in southwest Nova Scotia since the early 20th century. Some species have dramatically increased. Allen reported seeing only five mourning doves in 17 years. Today they are commonly seen at bird feeders.
Other species have precipitously declined. The one I found most stark was the change in blackbird populations. The rusty blackbird today is listed in the federal Species at Risk Act as of “special concern” and “endangered” in the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act. Allen listed the rusty blackbird as a “rather common summer resident.” In contrast, he had only two records of the red-winged blackbird and four records of the common grackle. Both blackbirds are common today.
Allen listed the barn swallow, cliff swallow and tree swallow among the most abundant birds in southwest Nova Scotia. All these species are now of conservation concern to varying degrees.
The Yarmouth Christmas Bird Count was repeated in 1914 and 1915, presumably by Allen and Harrison Lewis. The next Christmas Bird Count in Yarmouth wasn’t until 1973, when 28 participants counted 10,947 birds of 69 species.