2024 Helmut Grünberg Yukon Birdathon

By Jim Hawkings

The annual Helmut Grünberg Yukon Birdathon is the Yukon Bird Club’s main fundraiser, but more importantly, it’s a great way for Yukon birdwatchers to spend up to 24 hours seeking out the full diversity Yukon birds (…and avoiding less pleasant activities like spring cleaning…). It is held on the last weekend of May, just as the last few spring migrants trickle back to the north. The birdathon is a fairly informal affair, but the many detailed bird checklists submitted to eBird by participants provide an interesting snapshot of birds present on this weekend each year, and contribute to our overall knowledge of Yukon Birds. It’s also a great social event.

This year’s birdathon was yet another great success. Forty people participated, enduring some rather lackluster, cool conditions. It wasn’t the worst weather we’ve had, but cool enough that swallows were not exactly cavorting all over the place. Many environmentally conscious birders this year walked and biked, but they also e-biked, carpooled, and used public transit or electric vehicles. Many chose to explore places fairly close to home.

When the dust cleared on Saturday afternoon, there were some familiar names at the top of the list for most species seen or heard during the 24-hour period. Adam Perrier managed 106 species, followed closely by the team of Syd Cannings (our feature birder!) and Avery Bartels at 104. Our perennial champion, Jukka Jantunen, had 100.

What’s remarkable about Jukka’s birdathon is that, for the first time, he was enviro-birding by foot and bike, in an effort that brings to mind the epic birdathons of the late Helmut Grünberg. Like Helmut, Jukka almost managed to beat everyone!

We had a record number of eight people enviro-birding (using only human power, public transit, or e-bikes for transportation). Behind (….well behind) Jukka in the enviro-birding category were Lena Ware and Cameron Eckert, tied with 57 species, while the team of Ashwyn Freyne and Knute Johnsguaard had 55; Kirsten Wilcox and Ted Murphy-Kelly both managed 54.

Ted’s birdathon was remarkable in that he spent the entire period in a small area the size of a backyard. Mind you that “backyard” was at the Albert Creek banding station! Another remarkable birder was 7-year-old River Richardson, who found 12 species by himself on foot. We have an award category for backyard birding, but it seems we didn’t have anyone this year who truly satisfied the criteria – maybe a good thing as people took the time to explore the larger area accessible from their home by foot or bike.

Among new participants to the birdathon, the team of Austin Zeller, Rachael Anderson, and Matt Evans had 71 species, followed by Ashwin Freyne and Knute Johnsguaard with 55. The team of Isabelle Cliché along with the Bearisto brothers Henry, Julian, Seamus had 40, as did Katherine Sandiford birding with Arthur and Julia Creamer.

Birding is fun for all ages! This year’s participants ranged from 6-year old Grace Pinkerton (one of six participants under 12) to 75-year-old Bob Atkinson.

Among families who participated as a team, John Meikle and Helen Liskova were the champs with 54 species, while Katherine Sandiford and her kids had 40, and Anne, Dorothy, and Grace Pinkerton had 35.

But what about the birds? We had 149 species this year, just two shy of the record number of 151 in 2019. There was the usual smattering of birds at the northwestern edge of their range seen by Ted and Jukka around Watson Lake, but nothing truly unusual.

The post-birdathon gathering and putluck dinner was well-attended, and there was a steady chatter of participants exchanging tales of adventure over dinner. Once again it was windy enough that we needed John Meikle’s generous expertise in setting up a tarp windbreak at the shelter in Rotary Park. We look forward to a possible return to the more sheltered setting at Robert Service Park next year!

Thanks to all the YBC board members who helped make the Birdathon a success this year, especially Betty Sutton who once again rounded up a bunch of wonderful prizes. And of course we thank our Feature Birder Syd Cannings and all the other participants and sponsors for their ongoing support of the Yukon Bird Club.

Results
2024-birdathon-results-for-web

Master Checklist
YBC-Birdathon-2024-master-checklist-for-web

2023 marked the second full-on Birdathon since we (mostly) emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.  Once again it was a pleasure for everyone to be able to gather socially for dinner after the birdwatching dust cleared!

Results

• Cathy Hoehn 32
• Colin Abbott and Vickie Rochon 31
• Tony Gonda 23
• Jasper Caudle 16
• Gemma and River Richardson 16

• Julie Bauer and Terry Skjonsberg 78
• Shyloh, Toren, and Kassandra van Delft 68
• John Meikle and Helen Liskova 42
• Amy, Lauren, and Hannah Ryder 22
• Gemma and River Richardson 16

• River Richardson (6 years old)
• Hannah and Lauren Ryder  (12 years old)
• Jasper Caudle (12 years old)

• Shyloh, Toren, and Kassandra van Delft 68 (bike and foot)
• eShrikes – Lena Ware and Cameron Eckert 63 (eBike and foot)
• Jenny Trapnell 57 (foot and public transit)
• Cathy Hoehn 32 (foot and plug-in-hybrid electric vehicle)
• Becky Striegler 31 (foot and public transit)
• Jim Hawkings 31 (foot)
• Tony Gonda 23 (foot)
• Amy, Lauren and Hannah Ryder 22 (foot)

Once again we had tremendous participation.  There were  29 birders, including 7 first-timers.  Cathy Hoehn had a great time in her first birdathon, using her plug-in-hybrid electric vehicle to get around.  Newcomer 12-year-old Jasper Caudle made a great effort, and even dragged his six siblings and both parents to the potluck!

Lots of folks made a really good effort to be enviro-birders:  Five people were solely on foot, two more used foot and public transit, three were on regular bikes (even hauled an infant with them!), two were on eBikes, and one used an electric car.  Together, that’s 13 of 29 participants – a huge change from previous Birdathons.

Weather…..well, after a pretty nice time last year, 2023 was a bit of a character-builder.  Windy and pretty cool (11-13C), with just a few drops of rain on Saturday. The wind was definitely our constant companion, and it made life at the potluck dinner much more interesting as well.  luckily at Rotary Park Paul Warner and John Meikle  stepped up and rigged a very nice windbreak using tarps and rope.  With the wind at bay, the evening sun kept everyone warm long enough to enjoy a great meal and the great company of other birders.

As usual most people were birding in the Southern Lakes between Marsh Lake, Carcross, and Lake Laberge, again this year, but we did have some going further afield. Julie Bauer and Terry Skjonsberg were out between Kluane and Haines Juction. Jukka Jantunen and Ted Murphy-Kelly decided to relive their birdathon of 10 years ago, so they drove from Whitehorse to Watson Lake on Friday and returned on Saturday.  Thanks to their sleep-deprived efforts, our species total was bumped up by 20 species.  Close to half of that increase was from birding in southeast Yukon – where a handful of species can be found at the very northwestern part of their North American range (e.g. Pied-billed Grebe, Blue-headed Vireo, Clay-coloured Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Tennessee Warbler, American Redstart, Western Tanager) .  Meanwhile Julie and Terry added another 5 species that were not seen by other observers (Northern Harrier, Great Gray Owl, Great Horned Owl, American Pipit, Pine Grosbeak).

Hard work (and covering a lot of ground) makes for a long bird list.  Our resident experts Jukka Jantunen and Ted Murphy Kelly proved this once again.  Their “sleepless in Watson Lake” epic netted 111 species.  This year’s Feature Birder, Alex Oberg, got a better night’s sleep at home, and was not too far behind with 87 species, followed by Tracy Allard with 81.

Our Birdathon species total was 139, which ties for the lowest number in recent years.  The cold, windy weather definitely played into this relatively low number. Compare that to 151 in 2019, 139 in 2020, 147 in 2021, and 146 in 2022.

As to the actual birds seen this year, nothing horribly unusual was seen, but there were a few interesting wanderers:  a Black-legged Kittiwake appeared at Quartz Road – this is gull that never really strays far from salt water and nests on cliffs along the coast! Also at Quartz Road was a Ring-billed gull….common on the prairies, but not here.

Memorable moments from this year’s 24 hours?  Swallows will figure in most people’s notes: It seems people saw almost no swallows, or, if they were lucky, stumbled on one the sheltered wetlands where hundreds or thousands of swallows were desperately wheeling about trying to get enough to eat.  In my case, the only one I saw during 30 km of walking was the Tree Swallow that was nesting in my nestbox at home – and all I saw was its head!   Logan McLeod found the other end of the spectrum – hordes of them in a small pothole lake near the Whitehorse Sewage Lagoons.

The Birdathon is one of the main fundraisers for the Yukon Bird Club – really the only one we have aside from our annual membership dues.  This year several participants really stepped up:  Alex Oberg, our 2023 Feature Birder, Cathy Hoehn – a new member and brand new participant in the Birdathon, and Ted Murphy-Kelly – a longtime YBC member and an undisputed cornerstone of the Yukon birding community. A huge THANK YOU to them and all the other participants and their sponsors this year.

On behalf of myself and all the other participants, I’d like to thank  once again thank our Birdathon Coordinator Jenny Trapnell for all her efforts, as well as Betty Sutton who lined up prizes and took care of logistics for the BBQ.

Participants

Download (XLSX, 10KB)

Master Checklist

Download (XLSX, 17KB)

Well, after a couple of pretty weird years, the Yukon Bird Club is back in normal field trip operating mode this year, including a fully-fledged Helmut Grünberg Yukon Birdathon held on 27-28 May – complete with an IN PERSON potluck dinner on Saturday evening after the 24 hours of birding was finished.  This was a pleasant change from two years of Zoom meetings which made it very difficult to share any delicious food!

Results

This year’s Birdathon had tremendous participation.  There were  29 birders, including 11 first-timers.  For the first time in several years, the weather was quite pleasant (definitely in a different league than last year!), notwithstanding a few isolated squalls of rain and hail on Friday night in the Whitehorse area.

People were birding mostly in the Southern Lakes between Marsh Lake, Carcross, and Lake Laberge, but a few went as far as Haines Junction, and we had Kim Selbee up in Mayo.  This was the first year in quite awhile that none of our participants were birding in the Watson Lake area, where a handful of species can be found at the very northwestern part of their North American range.  In spite of that, our hard-birding crew managed to see or hear 146 species, just one less that the 147 seen in 2021, and better than the 139 seen in 2020.  The best recent year was 151 species recorded in 2019.

As to the actual birds seen this year, a few oddballs turned up. A Willet – a large shorebird normally found on the prairies- was seen by multiple participants at Lewes Marsh.  Tracy Allard glimpsed a Black Tern at Jackfish Bay on Lake Laberge.  Black Terns are also prairie birds that just poke their noses into the southeast Yukon. A Glaucous-winged Gull was skulking among the hordes of Herring Gulls in on the gravel bars at Quartz Road, well inland from it’s usual home on the Pacific Coast.  Alex Oberg found another visitor from the southeast – a Western Tanager – at the Marsh Lake Campground.

After all the Steller’s Jays seen in the past 18 months, only one turned up on the Birdathon – all that is left of the big invasion?

Our top birders this year were a team of biologists: the Dufflbags, including our feature birder Lena Ware, long-time YBC board member Cameron Eckert, and Kirsten Wilcox.  They managed 116 species of birds – and even got a few hours of sleep in the middle of it!  Close on their heels was Adam Perrier with 114 followed by Tracy Allard with 106.  Our perennial winner, Jukka Jantunen, tried his luck in Haines Junction this year instead of his usual Watson Lake haunts.  Along with teammates Shyloh van Delft and Julie Bauer, he saw 96 species.

It was particularly heartening to see the 11 first-time Birdathoners, many of whom are still quite new to birding. Congrats to all of you! One of our new youngish keeners, Kirsten Wilcox, topped this crowd as well as being part of the overall winning team. Behind her was Dominique Blanc with 96 and Alex Oberg with 60.  Among our newcomers were 11-year old sisters Lauren and Hannah Ryder and their mom Amy Ryder.  Lauren and Hannah were also our youngest participants and their team also distinguished themselves by enviro-birding very close to their own home in Whistle-bend!

Aside from the Ryder clan, the only other enviro-birder this year was yours truly.  Enviro-birders participate under their own power or using only renewable energy during the entire 24 hour period.  Traditionally this has been walking, biking, or paddling.  This year does mark our first Electric Vehicle participants: Grant Abbott and Wendy Nixon! Next year we will consider officially expanding this with some other categories:  e-bikes, other Electric Vehicles,  Car Pooling, Public Transit.  Let us know if you have other suggestions!

This year our Birdathon wasn’t completely without glitches, as our normal post-Birdathon social venue, Robert Service Campground, was closed for renovations, forcing a move to a more exposed location at Rotary Park. Luckily for us, the sun was out and the wind calmed down so it was an extremely pleasant shirt-sleeve event attended by 27 people!

As always, there were interesting stories of adventure from participants.  Among my memorable moments was exploring the bike trail along the Alaska Highway between Golden Horn subdivision and the Yukon River Bridge for the first time ever, even though I have lived here since 1983, and even lived for 7 years at the Yukon River Bridge!  This was a very pleasant ride in the warm(ish) morning sun, made even better by a nice tailwind from the north and a generally downhill gradient.  Coming back at the end of the afternoon into the wind and uphill was a bit more exhausting however.  Another great moment was a surprise I got while watching an Olive-sided Flycatcher busily working the shrubby area at the far end of Lewes Marsh next to the sawmill road.  I was enjoying a nice view of this bird through my binoculars and lazily waving at a bee that was buzzing around me, when the flycatcher looked my way and then, completely unprovoked, suddenly charged directly at my head. I was actually quite startled but quickly understood the situation as the bird snagged the bee next to my ear and darted back to it’s perch, where it beat it’s quarry furiously against a tree branch and swallowed it.  That was the end of that buzzing.

On behalf of myself and all the other participants, I’d like to thank  our Birdathon Coordinator Jenny Trapnell for all her efforts, as well as Betty Sutton who lined up prizes and took care of logistics for the BBQ.  And of course thanks to all the participants and sponsors for making the event a huge success this year!

Participants

Download (XLSX, 13KB)

Master Checklist

Download (XLSX, 17KB)