By: Jeremy Hatt

The first ever Comber CBC took place on December 22nd, 2024, w/ 16 keen and enthusiastic volunteers. A total of 22.75km were walked for 10 hours and 583km driven for 32.75 hours and one hour was spent owling.

The Count was one of the coldest days of the winter period in 2024 for the region w/ temperatures ranging from -6C in the morning to -1C by the afternoon. Sunny skies and a light south wind helped make the day comfortable for birding. Most inland water and about 500m of the edge of Lake St. Clair were completely frozen.

The Comber CBC circle spans across Essex and Chatham-Kent Counties and includes several birding hotspots including Ruscom Shores Conservation Area, The Trans Canada Trail from Staples to Comber, Big ‘O’ Conservation Area, Comber Sewage Lagoons, Rowsom’s Tilbury West Conservation Area, Tremblay Beach Conservation Area, Stoney Point Sewage Lagoons, Tilbury Sewage Lagoons, Northside Park, and several parkettes along the Lake St. Clair shoreline.

By the end of the count, a total of 76 species and 26,812 individuals were counted.

The best bird of the Count was a male Yellow-headed Blackbird found by Paul Pratt and Paula O’Rourke at the Comber Agris Co-op. Other highlights included 1 Wood Duck, 2 Glaucous Gulls, 1 Iceland Gull, 1 Snowy Owl, 11 Short-eared Owls, 1 Northern Shrike, 2 Common Ravens, 1 American Pipit, 2 Fox Sparrows, and 1 Eastern Towhee. The Northern Shrike was flushed by Jacob Stasso on his way to the roundup showing that it’s never too late to add a species to the Count! At least three separate areas had Short-eared Owls active at dusk.

Notable counts included 1,064 Tundra Swans, 1,418 Sandhill Cranes (on the move after a significant drop in temperature across the province), 537 American Herring Gulls, 27 Northern Harriers, 1,728 House Sparrows, 8,997 Snow Buntings, 331 American Tree Sparrows, 16 White-crowned Sparrows, and 983 Dark-eyed Juncos.

Birds seemed to be scarce in forested areas but passerines were concentrated in higher numbers along creek edges, tree lines, and weedy fields; particularly sparrows. Winter finches were very low in number overall but other winter specialties like Snow Bunting were easily found throughout the Circle. Rafts of ducks reaching the thousands can often be found on the east end of Lake St. Clair but the freeze up made it more difficult to get high numbers of waterfowl and dabbling ducks were especially absent due to frozen inland waters. Raptors were easily found throughout the Count Circle and four species of owls were tallied.

Notable misses included Redhead, Bufflehead, Wilson’s Snipe, Bonaparte’s Gull, Pied-billed Grebe, Double-crested Cormorant, Red-shouldered Hawk, Eastern Phoebe, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Marsh Wren, Eastern Bluebird, Purple Finch, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark, Common Yellowthroat, and Yellow-rumped Warbler.

A casual roundup was held at the A&W in Comber to tally species totals and individual counts.

Next year’s CBC will be held on December 21st.