The National Audubon Society’s 123rd Christmas Bird Count took place from December 14, 2022 through January 5, 2023 with Bowen Island participating on January 2, 2023.
31 birders walked a total of 75 km, drove 8 km, and kayaked 3 km throughout the day and counted birds over much of the island. 78 different species with over 4,500 individuals were detected on Bowen Island over the course of the day! With the most notable observation being a northern shrike near the Crippen Park meadow.
The Christmas Bird Count - started in 1900 - is a long-standing program of the National Audubon Society, and among the longest running citizen science projects in North America. It is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across the U.S., Canada, and many countries in the Western Hemisphere go out over a 24-hour period on one calendar day to count birds.
Volunteers count every bird they see or hear all day through a designated 15-mile (24-km) diameter. Data from these counts has proved invaluable to understand the population features of North America’s birds.
The circle that includes Bowen Island also includes Gambier Island, Anvil and Keats Islands, the Pasley Islands, as well as Brunswick Beach to Stearman’s Beach up to Cypress Provincial Park’s forests on the mainland. The total tally for our count circle is 99 species with over 12,000 individuals.
I would like to thank all the birders that took part in this year’s count. Gratitude also goes out to those property owners that allowed birders to access their property to watch feeders, check in on significant bird habitat and otherwise enabled us to increase our count.
As there is a specific methodology to the Christmas Bird Count, if you’d like to participate next year, feel free to contact me at 604-838-2321 or by email [email protected]
