Weekly Reports

Like last year, I, Nicole Krikun, am making a special guest appearance to write about my and Richard’s Birdathon run. For those of you who do not know or remember us, Richard was the Bander-in-Charge and I was the Assistant Bander at the LSLBO for many years. Although I no longer work with birds, I am still an active birder and do my best to stay involved with the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory.

Above: Richard and Nicole Krikun on their Birdathon fundraising run May 17, 2025.

The Birdathon is one of my favourite days of the year; I am like a kid on Christmas waiting to open all the presents in the form of bird sightings. This annual fundraiser challenges birders to find as many species as possible in a 24-hour period. It is for all ages and skill-levels, and with digital tools like Merlin bird ID app and eBird, it is more accessible than ever.

Merlin Bird ID is a field guide on your phone complete with a features that can help with photo or song ID (though, as the app itself will warn you, make sure you apply discretion while using these features as they are not perfect).

EBird allows any birder to compile their sightings into checklists. These checklists aggregate over 100 million observation records every year from around the world and provide insight into bird population trends, migratory timing, species distributions, and habitat use. In this way, eBird lets every birder contribute to conservation science. Many birders feel intimidated by eBird, or think they aren’t skilled enough, but eBird only asks you to submit a list of what you can identify and has many unknown codes to choose from if you are unsure. You may start by submitting lists of five species, but with help from field guides, physical or digital, in time your lists will grow along with your skill.

This year, Richard and I started our Birdathon in Sherwood Park on May 17 at 5:45 am. After a quick stop right outside of town, we swung a loop north over Edmonton and travelled west to Brazeau Dam. From Brazeau, we went south to Rocky Mountain House before heading back home. The next morning, I did a quick walk of our local wetland to complete our 24-hours.  We covered about 700 kilometers and I submitted 15 eBird checklists as we stopped at various locations on our route.

We quickly encountered all the expected duck species and a whopping 19 shorebird species. By 3:00 pm, we were at 115 species, and I thought we were well on our way to breaking our record of 125 species set in 2017. Unfortunately, that is where we stalled out. It wasn’t until 9:30 pm that we got another species which was the Bird-of-the-Trip, a Short-eared Owl – quite possibly the prettiest of all owl species! My quick jaunt through the local wetland the next morning garnered another five species. You might think I am disappointed about not beating our record despite a promising start, but on the contrary, I am just excited for next year when I get to try again!

If you want to see our full list of observations, you can check-out my eBird trip report (a complication of our fifteen checklists). If you are like me, you can also enjoy checking out data-points like which bird was on the most lists (Red-winged Blackbird and Yellow Warbler, both of which were on 8 of 15 lists), or which bird was the most numerous (California Gull thanks to a breeding colony). Until next year, I wish you good birding.

If you would like to donate to our team and Birds Canada or the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory’s Team Tanager (whose Birdathon you will hear about next week), you can may follow these links to each. From each donation, 75% is given directly to the LSLBO and 25% is given to Birds Canada. Until next year, I wish you good birding.

By Nicole Krikun, LSLBO member and ex-Assistant Bander