A mix of rain and sleet fell as David McNinch walked along a paved path bordering Dry Creek in southeast Reno, binoculars in hand.

His eyes, sheltered from the precipitation by a hat, scanned the brush along the creek, a sea of beige and gold peppered with brightly colored garbage — plastic bottles, buckets, packaging — caught in the grasses and branches. Behind the creek, a chain-link fence partitioned off a maze of light industrial buildings where security alarms squawked. 

But McNinch wasn’t focused on the lack of scenery — he was looking for birds.

On a fence, he spotted a lesser goldfinch; downstream in the creek, mallard and gadwall ducks swam in lazy patterns. As McNinch continued walking, they took flight, and he quickly counted them as they flew into the distance.

McNinch was participating in the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count, the longest-running citizen science project in the world. Now in its 125th year, the count relies on a mix of professional and amateur birders to document birds during a finite period, painting a picture — sometimes hopeful, sometimes bleak — of evolving species trends and populations.

“The strength of the data is in the time,” said McNinch, who is retired and has participated in the counts for nearly 40 years. “Over time, you’re going to see patterns.”  

During the count, the nation is divided into territories; birders count in their designated territory on an assigned day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5. Last year, nearly 300 birders participated in 16 counts across Nevada; this year, in Southern Nevada alone, roughly 150 people (the most ever) are registered to participate. 

The count tallies all birds that are seen or heard on that specific day within the territory, with the data then collected and organized by the National Audubon Society. 

“It allows us to do surveys at a time of year where we know that most birds are in an established area so we aren’t double counting,” said Alex Harper, education and outreach chair for the Red Rock Audubon Society. “It’s that it’s happening across all of North America that makes it extremely valuable.”

As McNinch walked along the creek, his eyes flitted up to the leafless trees, then up to the sky, then back down to the grasses. In a tree, he spotted a black phoebe; overhead, a red-tailed hawk flew by.

“You just kind of go where they are,” he said. “You let them dictate where you go.”

To a non-birder, the variety of birds McNinch spotted during his walk seemed impressive. With his slow pace and watchful gaze, McNinch recognized fluttering wings in branches and low-pitched chirps most people wouldn’t notice.

But what McNinch and other birders across Nevada are also seeing are the effects of development and a warming climate on bird populations.

“The number of birds in the desert are dropping, and that’s traced in large part to climate change and irregular precipitation, higher temperatures and higher aridity,” Harper said.

Those changes mean a more arid habitat for some nonmigratory birds, while more transient birds are finding fewer water sources and more development. 

Migratory birds are also altering their movement patterns with the changing climate, spending longer amounts of time in places that once would have been too cold and without food sources. Birds never before seen in Nevada during the winter are now spending time in the Silver State as temperatures warm up — even small temperature changes can make a significant difference to birds, Harper and McNinch said. 

“The thought is they are adapting right in front of our eyes, doing things [that] 20, 30, 40 years ago would have been unheard of,” Harper said. 

Declining numbers

In the late 1800s, “side hunts” — contests of who could shoot the most animals in a certain period — were common winter holiday traditions.

By 1900, an ornithologist who noticed bird populations were declining started a different holiday tradition — counting birds on Christmas, instead of shooting them. More than two dozen birders joined in the effort, conducting 25 distinct counts from Toronto to Pacific Grove, California. The birders recorded a combined 90 species.  

That count evolved into the Christmas Bird Count, painting a comprehensive picture of the health and status of North American bird populations and how they’ve changed during the past century. Now, the count draws more than 80,000 birders annually who count about 600 different species.

The changes birders are seeing each winter are reflected in a first-of-its-kind report tracking bird populations in North America. The study, released in 2019 by scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and using data from citizen science projects such as the Christmas Bird Count, painted a dire picture. Bird populations experienced a staggering decline between 1970 and 2019, with populations plummeting from an estimated 10 billion birds in 1970 to around 7 billion today.

More than 2.5 billion of those losses were from just a dozen common species such as finches, blackbirds and sparrows.

The study’s scientists compare today’s staggering population losses to those of the past, such as the demise of the passenger pigeon.  

It was estimated that there were once more than 3 billion passenger pigeons in the country, but widespread hunting and deforestation led their populations to rapidly decline in the 19th century. The last known pigeon of the species, Martha, died in captivity in 1914.

Now, birds such as red-winged blackbirds (widespread across Nevada) are seeing rapid rates of decline, similar to the passenger pigeon. Red-winged blackbirds are suffering “severe, unsustainable losses,” according to the Cornell report, having lost a third of their population during the last 50 years. 

“The rates at which bird populations are declining is increasing,” Harper said. 

Loss of habitat and a warming climate 

Nevada birders are seeing the effects of a warming climate and shrinking habitat affect birds statewide. 

Between 1964 and 2010, rough-legged hawks were spotted annually in the Truckee Meadows area. They’ve only been spotted in the meadows three times since, McNinch said. Those who monitor the hawks theorize that the birds are wintering further to the north as the climate warms.

“We’re just not seeing them anymore,” he said.

Another once-common bird, the ring-necked pheasant, is also no longer found in the Truckee Meadows. These non-native birds prefer farmland and open areas — they’ve disappeared as the Truckee Meadows have been developed.

Other birds such as black phoebes, great-tailed grackles and long-billed dowitchers are now common sights during the winter as average temperatures gradually increase — McNinch saw a black phoebe while walking along the ditch, a bird he said he wouldn’t have seen a couple of decades ago.

Southern Nevada is experiencing a similar phenomenon, Harper said. Birders are reporting altered behavior in Say’s phoebes, a type of songbird that thrives in arid climates. The birds, generally territorial and competitive in winter, are instead exhibiting mating-like behaviors and working cooperatively.

“Temperature … affects them in terms of where they’ll go and their ranges,” Harper said. “It also changes the timing of migration. We see birds lingering later on in the fall, because insects are more available into the fall. They aren’t going farther south because they are taking advantage of food.”

And while Nevada is largely undeveloped outside of the Reno and Las Vegas areas, large-scale projects such as solar fields or wind farms can significantly affect bird populations, said Jess Brooks, wildlife staff specialist at the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

What appears to developers to be empty, barren land is often critical habitat for a wide range of species, she said. 

“Most birds are indicator species. If a habitat is suffering, usually birds will be the first ones to suffer,” she said. “So if we pay attention, we will see those signs.” 

The longevity of a diverse population of bird species has other benefits, McNinch added.

“They provide a lot of pleasure in just knowing that they’re there,” he said.