Today is Christmas Bird Count day. We have always done the backyard bird count, and are doing that today. This morning the temperature here was minus 1, and I'm sure further inland, much colder. Not my favorite temperature to be out hiking around counting anything. Being inside, counting from our kitchen viewing window, seems much more pleasant. So we began with two nuthatches, and nothing else. By 11 AM, only four nuthatches, a magpie and a squirrel (don't believe that counts). Then we heard the welcome drumming of a woodpecker. We walked out to the deck and peered around the edge of our spruce tree property line, and saw, on the former aspen staging tree which is now a tall dead stump, one female woodpecker, drumming away vigorously. At 11:30, still no chickadees. About two miles as the crow flies, there is a large area that has been completely clearcut and the slash piles are presently burning. It's a heartsick moment, when you drive by an area that has been full of thick spruce trees and mixed deciduous and suddenly see flat ground. Habitat is gone. Probably to be replaced by metal industrial strength buildings housing bulldozers. There is so little regard around here for trees, for natural habitat, for natural beauty and aesthetics. It's part of the reason we have become birders, appreciating and respecting the natural world around us. I assumed when we moved to Alaska that everyone here must be an environmentalist. What a joke.
Will post again later after we finish our bird count. It may be that we'll have to do some creative reporting, as in, "4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtledoves, and a .........." But, hopefully we'll have more visitors before sunset.
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