Yellowknife (Jan 05/07) - Bird watchers spent New Year's Eve tramping through city streets and bush, counting our feathered friends. The results may shock you: Yellowknife has a lot of ravens.

Allicia Kelly photographed these willow ptarmigan during the Christmas Bird Count on New Year's Eve. - photo courtesy of Allicia Kelly

Besides confirming the city's abundance of large, black-feathered scavengers, this year's Christmas Bird Count also provided more evidence that ptarmigan numbers rise and fall in 10-year cycles.

"We counted 360 willow ptarmigan," said event organizer Bob Bromley. "This is the third 10-year peak we've documented and there is a clear 10-year cycle of numbers."

But even having followed two 10-year cycles previously, they still can't be certain the cycles would continue, he said. However, he said they can feel fairly confident that their conclusions are valid.

"We're wondering what climate change will do to bird numbers and cycles - we're watching that with a lot of interest," he said.

Bromley said no one knows for sure why ptarmigan numbers follow 10-year cycles. Some ecologists theorize the cycle depends on climate, others on predator numbers.

Ravens were the clear winners of the day. The bird watchers counted 1,387 of them.

That's fairly average, said Bromley, as the birders usually count around 2,000.

"Last few years they've been down a bit," he said.

"We think it's because of the warm weather - they're not as tied to people food so they're dispersing into the environment more."

House sparrows came in at 209 birds.

"We're really perplexed about that," said Bromley, who said 209 was a much lower number than normal. "No ideas why, we just weren't seeing them."

Another strange thing the birders noticed was a lack of diversity among the birds, said Bromley.

As the climate has warmed, they've recorded about one new species per year, he said, but this year they didn't see a single one of the recently-added species.

"The only thing we could think of is that it's so mild they're not driven to depend on people, they're more in the bush," he said. "But we didn't see them out in the bush in the afternoon either."

Allicia Kelly came out with her mom Cindy. As a student studying wildlife biology at university, she said she was interested in learning more about birds.

"It was a beautiful day," she said, "and a lot of fun."

The highlight, bird-wise, for her was spotting some boreal chickadees.

"They're a common bird, but not up here," she said. "I'd never seen them up here before."

Bromley said the counting day, Dec. 31, was indeed beautiful.

"In the old days the few intrepid people we could get out were crunching their limbs along at -35C and -40C," he said. "Now it's nicer."