TRAVERSE CITY — In the annual Christmas Bird Count, there are stories that take place within moments, and stories that take place over decades.
Hans Voss, an avid local birder, was party to one of the former this past December, during the 2024 Traverse City Christmas Bird Count.
“There were three of us who saw it at the same time: Pam Hendrick, Paul Smyth, and me. It was out on River Road on a hillside. It came flying by us and we got our binocs on it and we all instantly thought ‘peregrine falcon!’”
Voss had previously seen peregrines in Chicago and Detroit, but not in Traverse City. In the minutes following the sighting, he conferred with his birding team, comparing notes on markings, wings, and the distinctive helmet pattern on the bird’s face.
“I would say the best way to describe [how we were feeling] was ‘totally stoked,’” Voss said, “We knew it was a big birding moment … but we had no idea that it was that rare for a Christmas Bird Count.”
Voss, Hendrick, and Smyth had logged the first sighting of a peregrine falcon in the Traverse City Christmas Bird Count, going all the way back to the first local count in 1959.
Traverse City is not the only local area to have a Christmas Bird Count. Birders in Antrim County and Old Mission Peninsula, Lake Leelanau, and Benzie County also fan out across a 15-mile diameter circle for one day in mid-December, counting every bird they hear and see.
Across Michigan, the country, and the entire western hemisphere, additional teams do the same, canvassing circles year after year, in what has become an enormous community science project since its inception in New York 125 years ago.
Last year, the Traverse City count received a mention in Audubon’s Michigan summary of the 2023 count, both for recording the seventh-highest number of species in the state, as well as for what Audubon writer John L. Trapp described as “the first indisputable Michigan CBC sighting” of a broad-winged hawk.
The 2024 Christmas Bird Count had stories too, and not just of the peregrine falcon.
Doug Cook, field coordinator for the Benzie County count, said that the expansion of duck and deer hunting seasons led to their count being about a week later than usual, and that their efforts were further hindered by snow squalls on the day. Nevertheless, volunteers counted 5,008 birds across 63 species. Cook said species highlights for the day included winter and Carolina Wren, brown thrasher, bohemian waxwing and northern shrike.
Kirk Waterstripe, compiler for the Lake Leelanau count, said 24 birders in the field spent a combined 64.5 hours birding in daylight and 2.25 hours owling, while four members of the team counted at feeders for a total of 12.5 hours. Altogether, they logged 4,811 birds across 61 species, while traveling 412 miles by car and 35 miles on foot.
He said highlights of their count included great blue heron, American kestrel, bonaparte’s gull, belted kingfisher, saw-whet owl, and snowy owl. Lake Leelanau counters also spotted record-high numbers of bald eagles and eastern bluebirds.
In the Traverse City count, beyond the peregrine falcon, compiler Nate Crane said ring-necked duck, white-winged scoter, American coot, sharp-shinned hawk, and Carolina wren were highlights of the day, as the team counted 8,608 birds across 71 species.
Volunteers for the Antrim-Old Mission count reported 4,319 birds across 60 species.
Across all four local counts, volunteers observed 22,746 birds, a 3 percent decline from 2023. Species present in multiple local counts last year, but absent from all local counts this year, were common redpoll, common loon, great horned owl, gray catbird, white-throated sparrow, and song sparrow.
Waterstripe said there is some natural variation year-to-year.
“Temperature is a big source [of variation] as we saw last year. Both the Traverse City and Lake Leelanau counts had record numbers of species [in 2023] because birds like hermit thrush, gray catbird, wilson’s snipe and winter wren stuck around in the mild weather,” he said.
He also attributed variability to weather conditions impacting birders’ access to seasonal roads, as well as to the periodic presence of irruptive species, which is dependent on food availability to the north.
As compilers log data with Audubon each year, eventually, that data tells the story of what is happening to bird populations over time.
Crane recently looked at Traverse City Christmas Bird Count data all the way back to the first year of the count. He said some of the long-term trends surprised him.
He found that 16 species have been observed every single year of the Traverse City count, including American black duck, bufflehead, common goldeneye, common merganser, downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker, blue jay, American crow, black-capped chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, American tree sparrow, northern cardinal, and American goldfinch.
Crane said he was surprised to see the list of species which appear every year also included three species not native to the area: mute swan, European starling, and house sparrow. All three have been making their home here in northern Michigan for at least 65 years.
Crane said the long-term data told other stories as well.
“There was a time when the American black ducks drastically outnumbered mallards [here],” he said. “Ring-billed and herring gulls have experienced population swings. Common ravens were essentially extirpated from our region after heavy logging and only returned as the forests matured.”
The peregrine falcon spotted by Voss, Hendrick, and Smyth is also an important moment in a long-term story. After their populations were nearly wiped out by DDT, peregrines were on the federal endangered species list until 1999. It was only last year that the DNR downlisted peregrines on the Michigan endangered species list from “endangered” to “threatened.”
Scientists use the Christmas Bird Count to analyze trends as well, with more than 300 peer-reviewed articles making use of the data, according to a bibliography published on Audubon.org. In 2019, a landmark study using data from the Christmas Bird Count found that North American bird populations had declined by 2.9 billion birds since 1970.
All of this knowledge is possible thanks to the community scientists who continue to volunteer each year, contributing what they witness in their own time and place to a multi-generational story spanning half the planet. Among the volunteers this year was Logan Clark.
“I grew up birding in Leelanau County, and spent four seasons working for the National Lakeshore’s wildlife division, as well as a season doing bird research in the county’s fruit orchards for MSU Extension,” Clark said via email, describing his history in the field.
More recently Clark captured saw-whet owls while posted to a bird banding research station in Minnesota.
“They are small enough to fit in a beer can,” he said, “and that’s how we would weigh them,” noting that the researchers would first remove the beer can’s top.
Home on winter break from Utah State University this past December, Clark was assigned Good Harbor Bay and Little Traverse Lake for the Lake Leelanau Christmas Bird Count. He set out before dawn, expecting to possibly hear a great-horned owl or barred owl.
“I had heard nothing until my last stop near the west end of the lake, about 45 minutes before sunrise,” he said.
Then Clark heard a distinctive call, and not one he expected.
When future birders look back through decades of data, they will be able to pinpoint 2024 as the first time the Lake Leelanau Christmas Bird Count documented a certain, beer-can-sized owl.
“After I stepped out of the truck,” Clark said, “I could faintly hear the steady tooting whistle of a saw-whet song.”