Snake Valley Christmas Bird Count, 2021: 55 Species Despite a Snowstorm

First published in The Midden*, Great Basin National Park's newsletter, Vol. 22, No. 1, Summer 2022. By Gretchen Baker, ecologist.*

A song sparrow on a snowy branch. Photo by Joey Danielson.

Another year of working around COVID still brought a strong turnout for the Snake Valley Christmas Bird Count on December 15, 2021: 18 participants.

A huge snowstorm the day before had closed roads and made travel hard, but every participant from Ely and St. George still came, and there were enough people to cover parts of some routes twice — which always turns up more birds.

The tally

• 55 species and 2,538 birds on count day, plus 5 more species during count week.
• Every route but one found at least one species no other route saw.

Standouts:

• American pipits — one team counted 26. They had been recorded only once before on count day and once in count week.
• A snow goose on a pond north of the Great Basin Visitor Center, previously seen only once, in a count week.

Most counted:

Working together

The count shows what volunteers and agencies can do together. It brought together the Utah Division of Natural Resources, the Nevada Department of Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management's Ely office, the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, local volunteers, the University of Nevada, Reno, and park staff.

Sources

• National Park Service, Great Basin National Park, "Results of 2021 Christmas Bird Count," The Midden, Vol. 22, No. 1, Summer 2022. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/results-of-2021-christmas-bird-count.htm
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.