NB Naturalist Feature: New Brunswick’s First Dozen Christmas Bird Counts – 1900 to 1956
By Donald MacPhail
DECEMBER 11, 2024 – Many New Brunswickers know that on Christmas Day 1900, William H. Moore, a naturalist, farmer, big game outfitter and educator from Scotch Lake, York County, New Brunswick became Canada‘s first Christmas Bird Counter.
More than 2,000 Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) have been done in New Brunswick since the year 1900 but William Moore never did another count, and fewer than a dozen were done over the next 50 years.
Here is the first dozen:
1900 – Scotch Lake, York County
William Moore got out for an hour on a 32-degree Fahrenheit Christmas Day – and registered the first ever CBC data glitch! He reported 36 birds from 9 species, but only 34 birds from 8 species are in the report published by The Audubon Society in New York.
1908 – Grand Manan
A recent discovery (by me; David Christie seems to have known about it by at least 1968) shows that a count occurred on Grand Manan in 1908. Count results were reported in The Journal of the Maine Ornithological Society (MOS) in March 1909. When contacted recently, the MOS was pleased to hear from someone in New Brunswick and readily agreed to allow the 1908 Grand Manan results to be cited here.
Count protocols evolved in the early years of the CBC and the procedure used for counts in at least Maine that year were different to today’s – but probably worked very well for the time. The Model T Ford only started production that year so most counts would have been done on foot. Participants were asked to go out every day during the Christmas week and note species and numbers of birds. Probably a much better way to assess populations given that we all go out on Count Day and remark that more or fewer of all kinds of species were around “just a few days ago”. Birds move around.
Allan Moses did that Grand Manan count. He and his father, also named Allan, were well-known naturalists on Grand Manan, and further afield.
1924 – St. Stephen to Deer Island
Published in The Canadian Field Naturalist, this count was not compliant with today’s protocols either. It was essentially a report of James Lord’s sightings on a December 24 trip from St. Stephen, where he lived, to his original home on Deer Island and then back again on December 26. Travel was by “motor car and motorized boat”.
Sightings included a Barrow’s Goldeneye, four species of owl and 500 Robins feeding on Rowan trees and also in the seaweed along the beach.
1937 – Kent Island
Near Grand Manan, this island was surveyed by four individuals from Bowdoin College in Maine, who travelled to the island by boat from Lubec, Maine. Kent Island had recently been acquired by the Rockefeller family and donated to Bowdoin College as a bird sanctuary/research facility that the college continues to operate today.
Many “Dovekies” (Little Auks) were observed during the boat trip. They also noted 500 Long-tailed Ducks, 46 Purple Sandpipers and – interestingly for a small island – 20 White-winged Crossbills and 8 Acadian (Boreal) Chickadees, as well as other land birds.
1945 and 1946 – Saint John
Austin Squires, Curator of the New Brunswick Museum, took counts around the museum and reported them to The Canadian Field Naturalist. It was below freezing with snow on the ground both winters; it’s not often like that now, 80 years later. Austin was out for two hours and reported an Ivory Gull, 12 Pine Grosbeaks and “about 100 English Sparrows” in 1945. He also counted New Brunswick’s first Count Period species, a Snowy Owl, five days after Count Day. In 1946, Austin was out for only an hour and half – not long enough to find a Black-capped Chickadee – spoiling this species’ perfect attendance on all 70 years of Saint John’s CBCs.
Austin also reported just six English Sparrows in 1946 after the previous year’s 100. Saint John reported no sightings of this species in 2023; only 131 were reported within the entire province that year.
1948 – Woodstock and Sackville
Both 1948 counts were done by Joan and George Boyer. They did the Woodstock count on December 26th and the Sackville count on New Year’s Day 1949, reporting both to The Canadian Field Naturalist.
In Woodstock, Joan and George walked 15 miles (24 km) together and found 15 species. Common Goldeneye and Common Mergansers in the river, Redpolls, White-winged Crossbills and 7 “Brown-capped Chickadee (Acadian)” in the forest, plus 553 Starlings and 48 House Sparrows around town.
In Sackville they reported 20 species including 15 Ravens and no Crows, 16 “Brown-capped Chickadee (Acadian)”, 500+ Starlings and another 48 English Sparrows (after calling them by the new “House Sparrow” name in Woodstock). They also reported that 79 Lapland Longspurs and 125 Snow Buntings were seen on December 22 before they left for Woodstock.
George was born in Woodstock in 1919. A year after getting a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Brunswick, he was working on a reforestation project in the province. The next year, he was in Europe with an anti-aircraft battery. Joan was from England and they were married there. After the war and more university time, George worked as a wildlife biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Sackville where he studied Pintail Ducks. George died suddenly in 1960 while working on Canada Geese around James Bay – just after being appointed head of research in eastern Canada.
1949 – Memramcook
Reid McManus reported a count from the Memramcook area directly to Audubon in 1949. I asked Yolande LeBlanc, the current Memramcook compiler, whether she knew anything about Reid. Here is her response:
“Born in 1913, Reid McManus was an unassuming gentle man, of calm demeanor, who loved birds. He would walk the Memramcook marsh with his binoculars. We all wondered what he was looking at, so we started looking at what he was watching, and became bird watchers in the process. He would go on excursions to Dorchester Cape to see the sandpipers. He even helped catch and tag some of those birds. He contributed to bird counts and kept detailed notes of his sightings. Bird watching became his full-time vocation in his retirement. Reid passed away in 2005.
When the municipality decommissioned an old sewage lagoon, a reserve was created and named in Reid’s honor.”
Not everyone would appreciate a sewage lagoon being named after them, but birders would!
1952 – Fredericton
The Christmas Bird Count was starting to be done more often in New Brunswick and in 1952 a count was undertaken by the University of New Brunswick Biology Club. They covered the area well – 12 observers in 4 parties tallied up 30 hours of observing time. And they did something we don’t do today; they spent three times more hours on foot (24) than they did in their cars (8).
Sightings included a Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier), 11 Ruffed Grouse, 20 Ravens compared to 3 Crows, 11 Black-capped compared to 2 Brown-headed Chickadees, 42 English Sparrows but only 7 Starlings and 5 species of “winter finches” – Evening Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin and White-winged Crossbill – but no American Goldfinches.
1956 – Fredericton
1956 was the last year in which there was just a single CBC in New Brunswick. Austin Squires called out to naturalists through Nature News, a New Brunswick Museum publication, to undertake bird counts in their areas. Austin went to his home in Fredericton, participated in the count there and then published the results in Nature News. This process of publishing provincial CBC results in a New Brunswick publication continues today with Nature NB’s NB Naturalist.
1956 – Saint John
OK, it’s a stretch, but until another old count is discovered, it was the only way I could get to a dozen. And it sort of is a count. As mentioned just above, Austin Squires tried to trigger counts all over the province, and in Saint John he set a date and invited people to meet on the steps of the New Brunswick Museum to go count birds. So, there was a date, a location, a compiler – but no one showed up. So, there were no observers and the only data collected was “zero observers”.
The Next 50+ Years
Austin’s idea caught on though and the next year, 1957, there were counts in Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. The CBC in New Brunswick quickly expanded to 20 count areas covering Miscou Island to Grand Manan, and Edmundston to Sackville, and through the 80s and 90s grew to the 45 to 50 counts we have in the province today.
Although data from the first 50 years of the Christmas Bird Count in New Brunswick may be sparse and infrequent and with few pairs of eyes observing, in many cases, it’s all the data there is. And just that bit of data indicates to today’s CBCers that some species we rarely see today were observed often a few years ago – and some species we see on every count now were not seen at all just a few decades back.
The birds do change over time and data from more than half a century ago is hard to find. The complete results from every one of New Brunswick’s more than two thousand Christmas Bird Counts are available through the Nature NB website. •
