Winter bird watch reveals Schuylkill's most common species
While much of the recent attention locally has been on the Eagles, a group of volunteers from western Schuylkill County has been more focused on birds of all types.
Those folks took part in the recent Christmas Bird Count that the National Audubon Society conducts each year across the western hemisphere, and they tallied how many bird species and numbers within those species they spotted in a 24-hour period.
One local count was done in late December in western Schuylkill, where 18 people took to various forests and fields in the Tremont and Pine Grove area looking for birds, and have now tabulated the results.
The birders witnessed 73 species, some of which they saw by the hundreds, and others just single birds.
And the most commonly seen species this year?
The dark-eyed junco, a small sparrow that thrives in woodlands and flocks around backyard feeders.
There were 992 of them seen by observers, followed by European starlings at 696, and Canada geese at 533.
A white-breasted nuthatch partakes in a meal at a bird feeder at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR)
The census is important to assess the health of bird populations and to help guide conservation action, according to officials with Audubon, which since 1900 has had volunteer observers conduct the count in the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands.
In western Schuylkill, the watch has been led for the last 20 years by Dave Kruel of Pottsville, who said that a one-year snapshot doesn't tell too much about what's happening with the local environment, but that by combining counts over time you can see trends that reveal the consequences of climate change, pollution and habitat loss.
For instance, locally in the years following the end of the Conservation Reserved Enhancement Program — which used to encourage farmers to leave some of their fields fallow — that land has been used for agriculture. Since then there have been no local sightings of short-eared owls, which used to come to that land to hunt mice and other food sources.
'We absolutely know that every year, a magnitude of habitat on a finite sized globe is lost to roads, homes, shopping malls, houses, industrial, agriculture, etc.,' Kruel said.
As a result, you can see reduced numbers of birds in those areas, he said.
'That's the power of quality habitat,' he said. 'It means everything to most non-human species. It's life and death.'
A tufted titmouse leaps into flight at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR)
While the count is valuable from a conservation standpoint, it's also fun to see which birds are here each winter, and which exceeded their ten-year averages, he said.
It was exciting to see three new count species, those being wood ducks, ring-necked Ducks and horned grebe, he said.
'Those along with the cackling geese, gadwall, green-winged teal, bufflehead, and two mergansers made for a really nice selection of water birds that we typically don't see on the count,' he said.
The birders also saw new maximum counts for several species, including killdeer, screen owls, flickers, hermit thrush, American pipits and red-bellied woodpeckers, the latter of which had 72 witnessed.
The volunteers saw one catbird, which is usually only here in the summer. And there were 17 common ravens, more than double the 10-year average for a bird that many mistake for crows, Kruel said. People don't even realize common ravens visit Schuylkill County, he said, adding, 'Their numbers have really grown.'
Regarding bald eagles, six were seen, slightly below the 10-year average of eight, he said.
A tufted titmouse sits perched on a branch at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR)
Next on the calendar for local birders is the Great Backyard Bird Count from Feb. 14-17, a global event held annually by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society.
For more information go to birdcount.org.
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