Paul Jantzen: Bird counters identify 79 species in county years ago
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
The first Marion County Christmas Bird Count took place on Dec. 16, 2001. Seven observers, including Gerald Wiens and Neal Whitaker of Marion and five members of the Wichita Audubon Society, joined 50,000 observers in the United States, Canada, and several tropical countries to count and identify birds on a day from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5. Official observers count for at least eight daylight hours.
The counts were begun in 1900 with 27 participants in 25 locations in reaction to a traditional hunting contest on Christmas Day. Choosing sides, hunters competed by shooting anything in sight having feathers or fur. Naturalist Frank M. Chapman wanted to highlight conservation rather than destruction of wildlife. He was also interested in measuring bird populations at the climax of their southern migration. Last winter there were 1,533 counting areas in the United States, 297 in Canada and 50 in Central America and several Pacific Islands.
Each counting area is a circle with a 24km (15-mile) diameter. In Marion County, the circle centers about a mile northwest of the northeast end of Marion Dam and includes Marion Reservoir, Marion County Lake, Marion, Hillsboro, Pilsen and Antelope.
The Harvey County count area includes the Little Arkansas River, Sand Creek, Sand Prairie Natural History Reservation, Harvey County West Park, Halstead, Hesston, and part of Newton. The 2001 count was the 53rd for the Halstead-Newton area. This winter's compiler of data was Dwight Platt, retired Bethel College biology professor who was on the first count in 1949.
The seven Marion County observers identified 79 species on Dec. 16 compared to 59 species seen by 21 observers in Harvey County on Dec. 15. Last year, 689 species were observed in Canada and the United States, according to Platt. The total number of individual birds counted was 27,038 in Marion County and (last year) 51,657,566 in the U.S.
The lower count in Harvey County this winter was attributed to high winds and the very dry last three months. Many ponds were dry or very low. Only two species of ducks were seen compared to nine in Marion County.
Wild turkeys were eliminated from these prairies and woodlands in the early 1900s, but reappeared in 1958. Marion County hosted 117 in the count; Harvey County found 593. Three ring-necked pheasants were seen in each county. Marion County observers noted seven northern bobwhites; Harvey County birders scared up 14.
When Cathy Whitaker asked Neal for the highlight of counting day, he named the yellow-bellied sapsucker he saw at Marion County Lake. "Oh, yeah," she said in disbelief.
Yes, there are such birds. They are described as uncommon transients and winter residents in Kansas. They peck small holes in trees, especially conifers, and feed on the sap that collects in them. They also eat insects and fruits. While none were seen on the Harvey County count this winter, they were seen on at least five of the last 10 counts.
