Exploring the Western NY Wilds: Birds on the Niagara and the Great Backyard Bird Count are both next week!
By Bob Confer, pictured is the Ring-Billed Gull
Valentine’s Day is just a week and a half away. No doubt, you’ve been thinking about how to spend some time with your loved one. While you are booking that dinner date, make sure you also book some time that weekend with something else you love – birds.
Birds on the Niagara
An extraordinary annual event is taking place along the Niagara River from February 12th to the 16th. Birds on the Niagara is North America’s only winter birding festival. It features a variety of activities such as guided walks, spotting stations, social events and art workshops, all of which can be researched at bird-niagara.org
The keynote event is a presentation by Corina Newsome called “Flock and Forage: Loving by Nature.” Corina is one of the most recognizable and dynamic individuals in the conservation movement, as an ornithologist, communicator, and co-founder of Black Birders Week. She’ll be speaking about the connection between community and conservation and how birds, science, and people are aligned. You’ll even experience that first-hand when you meet with fellow birders on the trail or at lookout areas during the weekend.
This binational celebration exists to highlight the natural wonders of what is a Globally Significant Bird Area. The Niagara River ranks right up there with the Everglades, the Amazon basin, and the Galapagos in that regard because of the sheer number of birds, in both species and quantity. Every winter, hundreds of thousands of birds spend their time at the Niagara River as its open waters and abundance of small fish provide nourishment to gulls and waterfowl from all over the world. You could see as many as 19 different species of gulls and, if you are lucky, you can add some local rarities to your life list, such as the gorgeous harlequin duck.
If you want to learn more about this event and see the passion behind it, visit the on-demand section of the Lockport Community Television website (LCTV.net) and check out the February 4th episode of WNY Tonight in which I interview Birds on the Niagara vice-president Marcus Rosten. His energy is contagious.
The Great Backyard Bird Count
If the Niagara River corridor is too long of a drive for you (especially if you are among my Allegany County readers), there’s also the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) that weekend. And, the GBBC is everywhere.
Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count was the first fully online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time.
Last year, nearly 840,000 people of all ages and walks of life worldwide joined the four-day count to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds. It’s an easy way to help the scientific community track bird movements, populations and trends.
It’s a simple project: For at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, which is February 13 – 16 this year, simply tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see. The data can then be entered and viewed at the GBBC website (birdcount.org). You can count from any location, anywhere in the world, and for as long as you wish.
Despite the moniker of “backyard” it is more than that. You could count birds there, but you could also observe them at any forest, field, or waterway. A project like this is nice because it gives some folks who are otherwise shut-ins in the winter months a little nudge to traipse outdoors, hiking, snowshoeing, or skiing to count birds.
I strongly encourage all birders – even those who count themselves as beginners – to explore the region during the GBBC; you’ll be amazed at the diverse wildlife that still calls this area home even during the most brutal of winters. Last month, for example, I counted 35 species in Niagara County during my regular travels and a few hikes. That number certainly would have been much larger had I watched gulls and ducks in the Niagara River.
Birding is one of the most popular hobbies in the US – around 96 million people observed, photographed or fed birds last year. You were probably one of them. If you are looking to add to that experience and battle the winter doldrums, experience the joys of the Birds on the Niagara or help advance ornithology with the Backyard Bird Count. Show some love for our feathered friends this Valentine’s Day.
=========
Bob Confer is the founder and nature loving guy behind the Exploring the Western New York Wilds nature series. Confer has spent his life in the Western NY waterways, backcountry, and forests. You can contact him anytime, Bob@ConferPlastics.com
