If you might have been eager about beginning up the pastime of chook watching, we’re informed this can be a nice time of 12 months to be studying about our feathered mates in Manitoba.
“A lot of people are interested in birding, but if they’re at that early level, the hobby of getting into birding can seem kind of daunting, just because there’s literally hundreds of different bird species to try to identify, both by sound and by sight,” says Adam Collicut, Senior Park Interpreter at Whiteshell Provincial Park. “Winter is a good time to get into that because we’ve only got about 30% of our birds left here for the winter, almost 3/4 of them migrate South or elsewhere for the winter season. So, there’s not too many, not as many as there are in summer. It’s a good time to get started.”
Chickadees, Blue Jays and Gray Jays are widespread birds throughout this time of 12 months within the Whiteshell and in city areas like Steinbach and Winnipeg, he notes.
“We’ve also got Nuthatches,” he says, including that there are some vibrant birds you may spot whereas mountaineering within the Whiteshell. “We might be able to see or hear some different types of Grosbeaks, both Evening Grosbeak and, more likely, some Pine Grosbeak as well. Those are just some of the common ones. Woodpeckers are also fairly common as well. Things like Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers.”
An Evening Grosbeak sits on a treetop. (Photo credit score: Sean Feagan)As you be taught extra in regards to the native birds, Collicut says you’ll rapidly be taught that there are various sorts of the widespread ones.
When you are starting the journey of studying about a number of completely different animals, even for specialists like myself or biologists, there’s all the time extra issues to find out about. And birds are an effective way to begin with that.”
As an instance, he says there are various several types of sparrows that reside in our province.
“There’s tons of different sparrows out there. Just the same with things like owls, different types of Eagles, there’s lots of different birds. There’s a never-ending source of things to learn about.”
On Saturday, households gathered on the Alfred Hole Goose Sanctuary for a Christmas Bird Count for Kids. It began with a crash course of some widespread chook species for the area.
Then they placed on their boots for a brief hike, recording info of the completely different birds they noticed and heard.
“And then, we upload that information onto the Bird Studies Canada site,” Collicut explains. “The Christmas Bird Count for Kids is actually a Citizen Science Program, one of the Citizen Science Programs available from Bird Studies Canada. There’s a number of other ones, but this one is a nice one to do right before everybody goes on Christmas holidays.”
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