While volunteer bird enthusiasts counted cardinals and robins for the Audubon Christmas Bird Count from Pittsburgh to Harmar, the most common bird found was the American crow — 20,000 strong, accounting for about half of the birds seen.
The Christmas Bird Count was held in some areas in the region Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve. The survey is the largest citizen science effort held for one day, sometime between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5, throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands.
In Westmoreland County, record numbers of waterfowl were noted the most, with 53 tundra swans and a raft of at least 400 common mergansers at Beaver Run Reservoir, according to Steve Manns of Monroeville. Manns was a count compiler for the Bushy Run count, which covered northern Hempfield, and northern Greensburg to Delmont and Saltsburg.
In Pittsburgh and the Alle-Kiski Valley, the rarest birds were a marsh wren, out of season in Indiana Township, and a white-fronted goose at Calvary Catholic Cemetery, which straddles Pittsburgh’s Greenfield and Hazelwood neighborhoods.
Waterfowl, including high numbers of common mergansers and redhead ducks, were tallied, as they usually are, on the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. Flocks of wintering Canada geese continue to grow, according to Brian Shema, operations manager and bird count compiler for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Volunteers counted 1,700 Canada geese in the Pittsburgh area to Harmar — the highest number in the local Audubon count records, dating to nearly a century ago, Shema said. The five-year average for Canada geese is 1,200. Manns also reported an increase in Westmoreland County.
“The increasing numbers probably stem from the reintroduction of Canada goose in the 1950s, creating a thriving population of geese that stay rather than migrate to the southern part of the United States,” Shema said.
Counting crows
Although volunteer watchers toiled on muddy paths in light rain, the yeoman’s work was counting the 20,000 crows flying over and near Duquesne University.
If Kate St. John, author of the local bird blog Outside My Window, and Claire Staples of Squirrel Hill didn’t find a good vantage point to count the crows at dusk at Duquesne University, their results would have been lackluster.
The Pittsburgh murder of crows settle down for the night together in what’s called a colonial roosting colony, which provides safety against predators for the birds during the winter.
This year, St. John and Staples perched on a bluff near Duquesne University’s Rooney Field. They struck it rich and at dusk counted 20,000 crows in flight. The university’s campus lights and street lights provided illumination to tally the black birds against an inky sky.
How do they decipher the number of birds rushing around them for 70 minutes? Staples spots the birds while St. John counts them by getting a fix on how many birds fill a space and counts those visual blocks of birds.
It’s an estimate, and it takes experience counting — not to mention experience recounting.
It also takes luck. During the winter, when these crows roost, they can change their night roosting location weekly.
“The crows outfoxed me last year,” she said.
St. John and Staples only reported seeing 220 crows in 2021 after spending an hour in the rain and fog.
“I stood in the wrong place,” she said.
Good tally despite challenges
It was an average year, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Shema said. The numbers of different varieties of birds were average, with 75 species, as were species counts for chickadees, white-throated sparrows and hawks.
Manns called the count results “standard” with a total of 9,259 birds in the Bushy Run count area.
However, Bushy Run volunteers hit a high of finding 389 turkeys throughout the county where the numbers of red-bellied woodpeckers continue to climb. This year, counters tallied close to 100 of those woodpeckers compared with seven or fewer in the 1970s and 1980s.
Manns attributes the increase to warming temperatures.
This year’s rather ordinary results could have been influenced by fewer field observers in the Pittsburgh area to Harmar, which was down by 25%, from 200 in 2021 to almost 150 for 2022, Shema said. Contributing factors included the count day falling on New Year’s Eve and the mild and rainy weather, Shema said.
“The bottom line this year is that this was a very successful count despite the holiday weekend and miserable weather,” he said. “It’s one more year of data that we can use to scientifically look where birds are occurring.
“We can see if their ranges are changing, and we can use the statistics to draw conclusions on bird populations.”
Mary Ann Thomas is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Mary by email at mthomas@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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