MANKATO — Aided by mild temperatures and open waters, volunteers in Mankato’s annual Christmas Bird Count tallied 54 species of birds over the weekend — the most in the 46-year history of the Mankato area bird count.
This year’s count, headed by Bethany Lutheran College biology professor Chad Heins, included 19 volunteers who fanned out across a 15-mile-wide circular zone. The zone, the center of which is in Mankato’s downtown, has been used since the bird count’s inception.
In addition to counting species, volunteers also try to come up with a best-guess tally on the actual number of birds observed. And in this year’s count, the waterfowl stole the show.
The most abundant aves this year were, by far, the Canada geese. Counters spied more than 2,500 of them — 2,000 of which were north of town toward Kasota. Counters also tallied nearly 1,500 mallards.
“We had 12 species of waterfowl this year, which is almost unheard of. Normally we get Canada geese, mallard and trumpeter swan — those are the three that we should get.
“And then every once in a while we’ll get a common goldeneye or common merganser, but this year we had 12 different species within the count circle. So we had American wigeon, northern pintail, canvasback, redhead, ringneck, lesser scaup, common goldeneye and ruddy duck on top of mallard,” Heins says. “That was pretty crazy.”
He says the mild fall temperatures played a role in keeping so many different species around so late into the year. The warmer temperatures mean the waters stay open, which prolongs access to a food supply.
Birds, Heins says, will stay in an area as long as they can. While it may be in the nature of some birds to head south, they’ll likely put that journey off as long as they can provided they’ve got plenty of food around.
It would be near impossible to get an exact count of birds and species. But an exact count isn’t the point, Heins says. Instead, the Christmas Bird Count exists to identify patterns. From there, over time, ornithologists and biologists can determine what is happening with the bird population.
The annual count is part of the Audubon Society’s count, which is in its 124th year. Last year national participation in the count was the third highest ever with 2,625 community counts involving nearly 80,000 volunteers across the United States and Canada.
Heins says the record-setting tally of species was impressive, but not too far off from recent years.
“The last count was 30. We had 52 the year before that, 46 before that. So I mean, it’s right about where it should be,” he said. “And probably we wouldn’t have had as good a count, but there were a lot of ducks in there this year.”