By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
COMSTOCK – The morning of the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count here dawned cool and misty.
The mist coalesced into fog the closer Michael G. and I got to Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site, where we were to meet the other count volunteers in the parking lot outside the visitor center.
Mike has been the count compiler for the Comstock and Del Rio counts for more than 20 years, and I have been his assistant, but we wouldn’t be able to do the counts without the annual help of a group of dedicated volunteers.
The pandemic has drastically decreased the number of people who have come to help us with the counts, but this year we once again had the help of Eva Fromme of Floresville, Texas, and Georgina Schwartz of San Antonio, who count as a team and who have helped us for many years. This year we also had the help of Del Rioan Jane Morain.
The temperature as we arrived at the Seminole Canyon visitor center hovered in the mid-50s, which is the warmest it’s ever been in my memory of doing this count. We visited briefly with the three other volunteers, and then we all set out for our assigned “territories.”
Eva and Georgina always count in the village of Comstock and along highways 90, 163 and 1024, and Jane counted the area around the Pecos High Bridge overlook. Mike and I count inside Seminole Canyon, and the good folks there always allow us access to the far reaches of the park, all the way to Seminole Canyon’s confluence with the Rio Grande.
From the very start of the count, Mike and I noticed the lack of birds in the park.
Even on the worst days in the past, the park has been alive with birds. Northern Mockingbirds, Pyrrhuloxias, Cactus Wrens and Loggerhead Shrikes perched on the tall yucca plants throughout the park, and the grassy meadows inside the park were alive with large flocks of the resident Black-throated Sparrows and migrant Lark Buntings and a variety of migrant sparrow species – Savannah, Vesper, Chipping, Lincoln’s, Brewer’s, Grasshopper and Le Conte’s. American Kestrels, White-throated Swifts and Common Ravens cruised the sky above the park.
On Sunday, Dec. 26, the park was silent. The only sound we heard was the soughing of the wind through the canyons and over the fields of cenizo. And the situation didn’t improve as the day went on.
After a day of hard birding, Mike and I found exactly 20 species of birds, and less than 100 individuals.
I’ll let Mike tell you about it himself:
“The results of the count were somewhat disappointing because many species usually seen in the past were absent, and the numbers of individual birds were also down. On count day in an average year about 70 species are seen and documented. This year only 36 species were documented within the Comstock count circle,” Mike told me after he had finished compiling.
Mike and I have talked a lot since the count about the lack of birds we found.
Mike said, “I think it would be presumptuous to point to a single cause for the absence of the birds at this time. One or a number of factors could be the cause, as many of the absent birds migrate to our area from Canada and Alaska.
“This is why it is important to have groups of citizen scientists like those involved in the annual Christmas Bird Counts to determine what factor or combination of factors is causing the decline we saw in the bird populations,” he said.
We will continue to investigate the mystery of the missing birds and will keep you informed.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
