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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - What Patricia Baldwin and Nicole Chatel found on Vee Lake Road after chasing a flock of birds could have attracted a bear.

"The birds were having a heyday," said Baldwin. "We're lucky we didn't become a bear's next dinner."

Nicole Chatel, foreground and Patricia Baldwin are focused on counting a group of Ptarmigan in the Latham Island area. The island residents have been joining in on the bird count for over ten years now and say their love for birds and the importance of monitoring species in the North keeps them interested. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

They followed a group of birds and at the end of the chase they found a caribou carcass. The flock of birds - ravens and gray jays mostly - were scavengers in a mad rush to feast on the body of the dead animal.

Baldwin said it was one of the more interesting encounters they had during more than 10 years of participating in the annual Christmas Bird Count.

Biologist and MLA Bob Bromley has been involved with the bird count since Yellowknife unofficially began participating in 1971.

"We started in 1971 because we were concerned with the impact of the mines on the environment and the habitats," Bromley said. "We wanted to start to build a baseline to monitor trends in future years.

"It motivated us to start recording natural history events like this, to bump up people's reality and realization of what is out there. It helped people become environmental monitors."

Yellowknife officially began counting for the Audubon Society bird count in 1983. Bromley said the Ecology North-sponsored event teaches the power of observation in a social atmosphere.

"People like getting together and participating in events like this," Bromley said. "It's a little bit of detective work. You never know what you're going to find out there."

Nicole Chatel, Baldwin's partner in the bird count this year and neighbour on Latham Island, said they get involved in the count because of their love for the outdoors and birds, but also for the significance of tracking changing patterns in migration.

"It keeps track of the health of the country," Chatel said. "By monitoring changes in species we can see how the environment might be changing."

Baldwin said with growing changes to the climate in the world, birds are beginning to appear in areas where they generally wouldn't normally.

"With climate change, birds may be coming here from the south and establishing here," she said. "There have certainly been species in the south that have dwindled in numbers."

In this year's count, which took place between Dec. 14, 2008 and Jan. 5, 2009, the 18 volunteers who counted found only seven species, the second year in a row they saw a drop in the number.

"It's a bit surprising, the numbers we got this year," Bromley said. "Last year we had a cold winter but we still got 13 species, which was a drop from the previous year. This is a continuous drop in the number. The weather may have been a problem for the birds."

One of the biggest surprises for Bromley were the redpoll species - common and hoary - or the lack thereof. Neither of the two species was sighted this year, where 386 were here last year.

"It's been a long time, maybe a decade, since we've had no redpolls," Bromley said. "They're known to be quite mobile as to where they go and the lack of alder cones and birch catkins - the redpolls' main sources of food - could be a reason. Our crops do seem down a bit."

Bromley said the data collected over the last 25 years in Yellowknife has begun to show trends in bird species in the North, specifically the raven. When they started counting over 35 years ago, there were only about 300 of them and the city's population was about 5,000. As the population grew, so did the number of ravens.

"With a population of about 20,000 now the number of ravens is much higher," he said. "It's getting closer to 2,000 as the years go on."

Bromley said the opportunity for scavenging has created a subsidized food source for the birds compared to those found in the wild.

"They never used to nest in town until about the mid-60s when they started that tradition," he said. "They also have a lot of young and they survive longer because they grow up with this endless food source."

This year is supposed to be a peak year for ptarmigan and it was obviously the case when Baldwin and Chatel encountered an aerial assault from the snow chickens - 28 of them flying low over their heads before landing to peck at bird feed on the front lawn of a home on Latham Island.

Another group encountered more than 70 on 51 Avenue and Forrest Drive, where traffic stopped because of the birds.

"We usually only see about five or six on our walk each year," said Chatel. "And it's usually a task to find them. This is unusual."

Baldwin said they have to trek into the brush to find any, most years.

"We have had to go out into the woods in thigh-high snow just to find them," she said.

Bird count figures show a drop in ptarmigans from last year, and Bromley said the lower number could be due to the cold weather.

"Ptarmigans become very inactive in this kind of weather, so it's possible we just missed many of them because they were hunkered down against the cold," he said.

Bromley said they don't have a definitive answer as to why the ptarmigan peak every 10 years or so, but two theories may explain the phenomenon. One is the relationship between predator and prey.

"As prey go up, predators respond and overshoot, causing a drop in numbers," he said. "They are always slightly out of sync.

"It also may be a habitat thing. The willows produce a toxin and it repels the birds from browsing on them and the birds aren't in as good a shape as they usually are."

While uncovering trends is one positive aspect of the count, discovering new species in the North is also important and one of the things to which avid birders in Yellowknife look forward.

The Bombycilla garrulus, better known as the bohemian waxwing, was the rarest bird Baldwin has seen during her time spent on the bird count. Eight were found last year, none this year.

"It was really incredible to see such a rare bird her in the North during that time of the year," Baldwin said.

Both Chatel and Baldwin are avid bird watchers, keeping their eyes open for new species all the time.

"Over the years we've been the only ones to find certain birds," Chatel said. "We know where certain birds are because we always keep our eyes and ears open.

"We just love birds."