The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) will be held Saturday, December 15 for the Grand Marais CBC, which is a 7.5-mile radius circle from a point three miles south of the middle of Devil Track Lake.
The count circle covers Highway 61 to Lindskog Road and north, some of County Road 60, the Gunflint Trail to the landfill road, the Pine Mountain Road to the backside of Elbow Lake, and Devil Track Road to Bally Creek Road, Ball Club Road to The Grade, Pike Lake Road, and Highway 61 west to Cascade Lodge, and all of the lakeshore between Lindskog Road and Cascade Lodge.
A participant can cover as much area or as little as you’d like. Anyone from a novice to a professional can help. The Christmas Bird Count is open to birders of all skill levels.
Needed are walkers and drivers as well as feeder watchers—anyone that can identify birds and count the highest number of a single species in an area as well.
We’ll also need any species of birds that you see in the count circle, but not on the count day. This “count week” happens for the three days prior and three days after the Saturday count.
What is needed?
For count day, you’ll need a guidebook, binoculars, a scope for lake birding, warm clothes, warm boots/Yak Traks, a logbook to record your observations, and a keen and quick eye to count our winter rarities!
If you are a feeder watcher, keep your feeders full up and through count day to encourage birds to be there on that day; have various foods available in feeders and on the ground to entice as many species as possible.
Please contact Jeremy Ridlbauer @sundew@boreal.org or 370-0733 to notify us about the area you can cover or what feeder or area you’ll be watching.
We’d like to contact you or have you contact us on the count day to report results. We’ll meet at 4:15 p.m. at The Blue Water Cafe on count day to compile results from anyone who can make it there at that time.
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