The Kamloops Christmas Bird Count is scheduled for December 15 th . For those of you who may be interested, but have not taken part before, or
don’t feel confident in your bird identification, let me put your mind at rest. The count takes place within a circle centered on the top of Mt. Dufferin with
a 12 km radius. That circle is broken into 11 parts based on geographical features or roads. Participants work in small groups, with at least one
accomplished birder in each group. The area can be covered by car, foot or other means, such as a bike or boat. We attempt to count every species and
tally the number of birds of each species, without counting any individual birds twice if possible. There is a 3-day window on each side of the count
day to allow us to include that rare bird that you saw the day before or that shows up right after the count day. We can break up the 11 areas into sub
areas if we get more participants than can comfortably work in a small group.
We also keep track of the effort put into the count – the number of participants, the total number of hours put in and the total distance travelled
by vehicle and by other means.
We generally follow up with a pot luck dinner where we put all the individual tallies together, however, you may email the tallies to the compiler if you
cannot take part in the post count tally.
Glenn Dreger has been organizing the participants for the past 2 years. His email is gdreger@telus.net and cell is 250-318-6368. Contact Glenn if you
want more information or want to confirm your participation.
Category Archives: Birds
Christmas Bird Count
Kamloops Christmas Bird Count Results
Submitted by Rick Howie (Compiler) It was a blustery, snowy day on Dec. 21 , 2020 for our 41st annual Christmas Bird Count first started in 1979. The club had been doing a half day count for a few years prior to this but we made it a full day Audubon count in 1979.The temperatures in the valley bottom ranged from 0°C – 1°C under cloudy, snowy conditions with winds brisk throughout the day. Temperatures at higher elevations in the count circle were likely 2-3 degrees cooler.
Continue reading →All of Glenn Dreger’s Advent Calendar Photos
The 2019 Glenn Dreger advent calendar gallery of photos for your enjoyment. Click on each one to enlarge. And now some bonus photos. This post requires some additional work.
Continue reading →Ancient Insects Ate Dinosaur Feathers
The new paper presents the earliest known evidence of insects feeding on feathers, and the authors suggest that this type of parasite evolved during or before the middle of the Cretaceous period, which occurred 145–66 million years ago. Ancient lice ate dinosaur feathers, similar to how modern-day lice eat bird feathers, according to a study published yesterday (December 10) in Nature Communications. Researchers led by Taiping Gao and Dong Ren at Capital Normal University in China, discovered the insect on dinosaur feathers fossilized in 100-million-year-old amber collected in northern Myanmar. The … Continue reading →
Caretakers Needed For Our Local Important Bird Areas
Canada’s Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas Program is a science-based initiative to identify, conserve, and monitor a network of sites that provide essential habitat for Canada’s bird populations. Canada is part of a global network consisting of over 12,000 sites in 200 countries. There are about 600 sites in Canada and 83 in BC. There are two IBAs in our area. These are the South Thompson River IBA and the Douglas Lake Plateau IBA. Rick Howie has been the caretaker for the South Thompson River IBA for many years. The … Continue reading →