Binoculars round their necks and area guides in hand, a flock of a number of dozen birders gathered on the Wasatch Mountain State Park early Thursday morning, Jan. 4.
They fashioned small teams and unfold out throughout the Heber Valley, wanting to doc the state of native hen populations.
“We’re here looking for as many species as possible, but also counting numbers of individual birds… for the National Audubon Society,” Heber City resident Matt Williams mentioned.
He was gearing up for an eight-hour day of birding. At the top of the rely, he’d come again with an inventory of what he noticed over the course of the day. Williams hoped for 75 or 80 species on his listing.
“There’s some counts up in Alaska that only get, like, raven and chickadee,” he mentioned. “There’s some stalwart volunteers all over the country doing this.”
Midway resident Cary Hobbs was amongst them. Pencil and paper in hand, he was the scribe in a trio of birders making their manner alongside the Provo River.
“We’ve got a red-tailed hawk, we’ve got five magpies,” he mentioned, “and 24 starlings, 24 ravens, 6 goldfinch, 10 chickadees, a song sparrow, about 25 robins and one rooster.”
The annual Christmas Bird Count, held across the U.S. for a few weeks yearly, is the longest-running citizen science challenge within the nation, based on Utah Division of Natural Resources park ranger and naturalist Kathy Donnell.
“This is the 124th annual bird count,” she mentioned.
Conservation scientists depend on the information residents accumulate to know the long-term well being of habitats and hen populations across the nation. They use info from the Christmas Bird Count to identify environmental points and strategize options. Americans have already logged shut to eight million birds throughout this yr’s occasion.
“The more we know about the birds in our community, the more we care about the birds in our community,” Williams mentioned. “Conservation really happens through people caring about what they see and loving the natural world around them.”
He mentioned anybody can grow to be a birder: simply begin by wanting round.
Results of this yr’s Christmas Bird Count might be available on the Audubon website.
