Why Yellowknife is great for birdwatching

As the weather warms up, birds are returning North from their winter getaways in the South. 

For bird enthusiasts in Yellowknife, that means it's time to bust out the binoculars and get a look at all of the different species arriving in town. 

Suzanne Carrière, a wildlife biologist with the territorial government, said Yellowknife is an ideal location for birders.

Carrière said this is because the city is the nexus of many bird flight paths to the North — meaning it's somewhere that scientists can get data about changes in bird populations over the long term. 

"If you want to do some monitoring it's really great, because you have 20,000 people, you have a percentage of birders," said Carrière.

Decades worth of data

Unlike places where birders come and go, in Yellowknife there are enough bird watchers who stick around or circulate in that they have collected more than 30 years worth of data. 

Having consistent eyes and ears on the area daily, gives them an ability to monitor change over time.  

"We're almost like a data point. If you put a map and you put Yellowknife, we're like a research station on our own."

She said climate change is a major reason why this monitoring is so important. At this point, she said, birders are still working on data collection before analyzing their information.

"To see if birds are changing their date of arrival in spring … we're seeing some birds are changing and so they're arriving much earlier."

Northern nexus

Reid Hildebrandt lives in Yellowknife and he's been interested in birds since he was eight years old. 

He's excited about one of the latest arrivals to town, the yellow warbler. He said many of them are coming up North all the way from Central America and Caribbean islands.

Great Slave Lake channels birds up to Yellowknife, he said, and if a bird is coming North, it's often passing through somewhere on the lake after travelling great distances.

"To me birds are special because they literally do come from hundreds of miles away, and they can show up overnight and be at your doorstep the next morning," he said. 

Claire Marchildon is a birder living in Yellowknife, who got into the activity about six years ago, on a Mother's Day bird walk with Ecology North. She has been "hooked" ever since, and she and her mother now share that love of birding.

There's also a competitive aspect to the hobby for her and others.

"I'm quite competitive so I get a little bit competitive with myself, creating a list every year of the birds I've seen."

She said the city's online birding community can also get quite competitive, with people updating the Yellowknife bird arrivals Facebook group with their latest sightings on a regular basis.

But no matter why or how they participate, birders can agree that the community in Yellowknife is quite special.