For longer than Las Vegas has been a city, people have fanned out across this country every winter to do one thing: count birds.
It’s called the Christmas Bird Count and this will be the 125th year. The event is open to birders of all levels at multiple locations throughout Nevada from Dec. 14 through Jan. 5.
The event, founded on Christmas Day in 1900, is a long-standing program of the National Audobon Society, where thousands of volunteers in 20 countries count birds in a designated area to gauge their populations.
One of the people closely involved is Alex Harper. He’s an avian biologist with the Red Rock Audubon Society. We talked with him about the count, why it happens, and what it means for Southern Nevada's birds.
Red Rock Audobon events
Christmas Bird County FAQ
The following transcript was created with a third-party service and may contain minor errors.
JOE SCHOENMANN, HOST: From Nevada Public Radio. I'm Joe Schoenmann, it's State of Nevada. For longer than Las Vegas has been a city, people have fanned out across this country every winter to do one thing, count birds. It's called the Christmas Bird Count, and this will be the 125th year. And yes, the count also happens in Nevada. And one of the people closely involved is Alex Harper. He's an avian biologist with the Red Rock Audubon Society. Alex, thanks for joining us.
ALEX HARPER: Hey, thank you for having me.
SCHOENMANN: It's great to have you here. This is a really interesting thing. I hadn't really heard about it before, but I'm thinking back 125 years and mentally comparing it to today. So I get why we want to keep track of bird species today, but 125 years ago, was there real worry about babitat ruination and pollution and bird decline? Why did it start all those years ago?
HARPER: Let's think back to the late 1800s and at that point in time, there weren't any sort of environmental laws. There were no regulations regarding water quality, air quality, or hunting. There were no protections for wildlife in the United States. And around the turn of the century, the 1900s, you had people like John Muir talking to Teddy Roosevelt, who would eventually establish the National Wildlife Refuge System the Antiquities Act, and begin conserving large areas of land. This is about the time when some citizens were looking around and recognizing that at the current rate that animals were disappearing or being hunted, habitats were being altered or even destroyed. There were people that recognized an issue and thought we should start to monitor these bird populations because they're probably declining. So in 1900, there was a gentleman who saw that there were some issues locally, and began the Christmas bird counts. I think there were about 27 participants across the nation, and they got together and they counted birds on or around Christmas Day, and it spread. People kept doing it. This is a citizen and community-led effort. It still exists today, and it's still growing.
SCHOENMANN: Twenty-seven that first year, about how many today take part?
HARPER: We're at about 80,000. Some of that includes people watching birds from their home. So these are feeder counts or backyard counts, but most of them are people actually getting out in the field. And it's mostly going on in the United States, but it's also happening in other countries too. So it has spread.
SCHOENMANN: Why is this bird count important, especially to you, an avian biologist?
HARPER: Well, it's a very large-scale survey, and it's taking place along a very large spatial area. So we're talking across the continent, and it's also the time scale, and you can really start to see trends emerge when you have that many data points over that period of time. It's also a great way to engage people, bring them in, that may not consider themselves scientists. They can come in and follow a pretty easy protocol. And generally, the way that they're structured is that you will almost always have experienced birders, bird watchers who can identify birds based on sight or sound, leading each party for each survey.
SCHOENMANN: You work for the Red Rock Audubon Society. Talk about some of the trends, both good and bad, that have been seen in Nevada.
HARPER: There are a couple of counts that are taking place in Nevada. We have the Corn Creek Christmas bird count that's been going on the longest, I think, for about 60 years. And some of the changes that we have seen in Nevada have to do with temperature increases and, of course, aridity, right? So there's the temperature increasing, but also the lack of the environment to contain water, either as vapor or surface water, that has an impact on where these birds are and the habitats they depend on, and we're able to see population changes, and most changes demonstrate that birds are declining in populations across North America, and that does show up in Nevada. It's not applying to all birds. Water birds, like waterfowl, have actually increased because of good conservation efforts, and hunters actually contribute quite a bit to that through Duck Stamp programs, but lots of songbirds are vanishing across North America, including Nevada. So that's one trend, and another really interesting trend is seeing that birds are beginning to shift northward. They're not going as far south. Some species, they're actually staying longer into the year in places that we believe that they couldn't handle. But with milder winters, we're seeing that some birds are just not going as far. They don't have to. They can physiologically handle the winters here now versus the winters that we had 50, 60 years ago, even longer down in time.
SCHOENMANN: Do you know if they're going further north during the summer because it's getting so hot in the South?
HARPER: That's a great question. That type of thing is not captured in the Christmas bird counts, but there are habitat shifts going on, and birds are a little bit more particular about where they breed versus where they spend the wintertime. They have a little bit more flexibility in the types of habitats that they utilize in the wintertime, but in the summer, they are usually looking for things that are a little bit more specific. So if there are plant communities, if they disappear or they shift, then the birds follow. I can say that in Alaska, there are birds that are beginning to shift into areas of Alaska from British Columbia, where they hadn't been there previously. I can say that it is happening, but not at the same rate as in the wintertime.
SCHOENMANN: So a lot of this depends on the climate. And there has been, from what we've read online, a 3 billion bird decrease in North America in the past 50 years due to habitat loss and climate change. What can we do to slow this decline, if anything?
HARPER: Locally, here's our situation. We have climate change that is really threatening a lot of our western species, just by the nature of the fact that it diminishes the carrying capacity of the western deserts by putting stress on the environment, and so it's harder for some desert species to exist in these places where the temperature is increasing. In some of our western forests, like in California, you have these wildfires and birds that breed in those types of montane habitats with like pines and furs, coniferous trees, they don't really have an alternative, so it's likely that they're in decline for those reasons. Then there's also the fact that about 12 million acres are now eligible for utility-scale solar, and that's going to take place in the next few years. The ball is rolling on that, and a lot of that will take up a lot of mostly desert valley floor. And transmission lines run all along where those solar panels are to get connected to the grid, and transmission lines also account for quite a bit of bird mortality. So large-scale habitat alterations are coming, and there's the development of places like Las Vegas, but on a landscape scale, that's not as much of a factor than some of those first items that I touched on there.
SCHOENMANN: You know, I've known people who went out and looked at birds just as a lark, and they have become complete fanatics for someone who's never done it before or even thought about doing it. What is it about watching birds, and taking photos of them that you think draws people in?
HARPER: You know, I think people naturally want to be outside, but once we're outside, we don't necessarily know what to do. But once you have a target, and that can be just observing birds, you begin to find out that it just kind of goes on and on forever. And I started out birding, and by the time I was 19 or 20, I was taking trips to Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador. Eventually, I got a job working in the Amazon as a birding guide, and did a couple trips to Asia. And by the age of 30, I'm 36 now, I observed about 3,000 species of birds in the world, and there are about 11,000. I haven't been to Australia or Africa yet, and some areas of South America really biodiverse. When I switched gears to do what I do now, one of my worries was that I was not going to get to see all these amazing birds in all these places, and the ability to just get to know the birds of Las Vegas so intimately through working with beginners and people of different skill levels. I can go to the same places and see the same birds, but I'm always seeing something new. It never ends. You can start to observe their behavior, and you realize they have personalities. They're amazing problem solvers, a lot of intelligence. You know, they're just fascinating. So my pitch is it can change how you see Las Vegas. You see that it's a place that has a lot to offer. And in Las Vegas — I swear I'm getting to the end here, Joe — in Las Vegas, a lot of people have this belief that the desert has nothing; all the wildlife, the interesting things, are somewhere else. But I think they just haven't noticed what's around yet, or they don't know the resources. And my belief is that, since it's so helpful to people mentally, it's it's an easy and accessible way for more people in Las Vegas to just connect with something outside of our hectic lives, our anxiety-inducing lives, and see some beauty every day, every day.
SCHOENMANN: We're going to have a link on our website about the Christmas Bird Count, but give some advice. Where should people go, and what equipment might they need if they want to do this?
HARPER: If they want to join a Christmas Bird Count, they can check out redrockaudubon.com and check out our events. We have an events page with a calendar and also a list, and you can register for any one of the six counts that we do in Southern Nevada. We also are adding another one down at Willow Beach in Arizona, so technically seven now, and four of them are at national wildlife refuges: Ash Meadows, you have Corn Creek at Desert National Wildlife Refuge, Pahranagat, Muddy River. We also have a Red Rock Canyon CBC, and then the Henderson Christmas Bird Count. The Henderson Christmas Bird Count is probably the easiest to get into, because most people are already in Las Vegas or Henderson anyway, so it's not much of a drive. And you sign up, you register. There'll be information on what to bring on the page. You show up, prepare to be out for the morning at least, and at least to lunch, maybe even for the rest of the day. And binoculars, if you have them, awesome, but they're not required. You can go and just help people spot birds, and people with binoculars and a little more experience can do the identification. And we like to joke that anyone can hold a clipboard, and that's vital to you know, somebody who is collecting data while everyone else is looking.
SCHOENMANN: I don't know how long you've been doing this, but I'm kind of curious. Why are you an avian biologist?
HARPER: I began when I was very young. I was actually about one when I really started gravitating towards birds. My grandfather was a bird watcher, and he helped to purchase land to set aside for wildlife, especially birds. And I inherited a bunch of his field guides and some binoculars from him. We lived in Miami Beach at the time when I was really young, and so there were pelicans, herons, egrets, ibis, and frigate birds. And I think when you're really young, it becomes really easy and exciting. And I didn't really outgrow it. When I got to eighth grade, I stumbled upon the Tropical Audubon Society. Then all of a sudden I realized there are more people doing it, so I went on field trips with them, and all these adults just pulled me in. Many of them mentored me. They were so excited that there was a person under the age of 25 that wanted to go look for birds with them, and they took me to the Everglades and took me all around South Florida. We did big field trips up to the Orlando area to look for specific birds that you couldn't find in Miami. And it was just so easy to be a part of this community, and so easy to continue looking for the next bird. There are so many birds out there, and you get to travel around and see the country and get to see all these amazing ecosystems where the birds are. So it's kind of this big adventure, in a way.
SCHOENMANN: Alex Harper is with the Red Rock Audubon Society, Alex, thank you so much.
HARPER: Joe, thank you so much for making time for me, and I hope that we see a couple more of your listeners out there this December.
SCHOENMANN: The Christmas Bird Count does begin December 14. It lasts until the first week of January. For more information on how to become a part of the count, we will have links at knpr.org.
Guest: Alex Harper, education and outreach chair, Red Rock Audobon
