The bird count numbers for the Quinte area are in and they’re the highest on record.
The overall species count from the Christmas bird count in the Quinte area came up with 71 species.
Tom Wheatley of the Belleville count tells Quinte News that the open water on the bay and lakes meant more birds than usual over the holiday season.
“So we had a lot of common mergansers. That’s about average. But then we counted an additional nine species during our count week, which is three days before and three days after count day.”
He added, “The total number of birds counted this year is 10,331. The average is 7,000. This was a lot to do with the open water and the ducks and Canada geese as well, they were quite high in numbers.”
Wheatley said there were five types of gulls counted. “There’s a larger one called the herring gull there’s a couple hundred of those. There’s a few come from further north and they sort of pass by, depending on how cold or how much food fodder. They’re called Iceland gulls, glaucaus gulls and greater black backed gulls. Wheatley says 26% of the birds, 2,640, were European starlings, which he calls pests.
Wheatley said there were five types of gulls counted. “There’s a larger one called the herring gull there’s a couple hundred of those. There’s a few come from further north and they sort of pass by, depending on how cold or how much food fodder. They’re called Iceland gulls, glaucaus gulls and greater black backed gulls. Wheatley says 26% of the birds, 2,640, were European starlings, which he calls pests.
“They’re non-native and they do disrupt the nesting of native species in the summer. They’re really expanding. They were introduced just over 100 years ago I think and now there’s over a quarter of a billion of them in North America.”
He adds, “They were brought to North America from Europe 100 years ago.”
Black backed gull
Merganser
