With retirement hours to invest in worthwhile activities, aside from cheering on the Montreal Canadiens, you’ve been thinking about combining gentle exercise, the great outdoors and learning to distinguish one bird from another. The question of course, is how does one get started into a potential retirement long interest?
With birds and wildfowl of all sorts and sizes, quite often we have learned some standards – the robin, the sparrow, the Canada goose and the mallard. So, where does one begin and will it cost a fortune to become a birder? Chestermere is blessed with a rare commodity – a lake that changes levels during the year. It also has a few small but key ponds, a shallow half of the lake north of the bridge, and good walking trails that gives one a great view of the water and fantastic bulrushes on the west side. In essence, the north half of the lake provides the senior with a nice walk, places to sit and a habitat that welcomes wildfowl and a few smaller bird species.
Perhaps one piece of technology will be the best investment for any birder. That is a pair of binoculars. When starting birding in earnest in 2017, I trusted my eye, but like all things, aging contributes to how far one can see. I’d recommend getting binoculars with a 10 by 42 or stronger to maximum your ability
to see out into Chestermere Lake and up into the trees near Founders Point. Learning to then bring them along and being able to focus them quickly are truly requirements, especially when looking at our tiny birds. Like all things worthwhile, having a good bird book makes a huge difference. Two we’d recommend are: “Birds of Alberta”, written by Chris Fisher and John Acorn The second is “Stokes Field Guide to Birds – Western Region”, authors being Donald and Lillian Stokes.
If you are technically gifted, using your smart phone, you can download some fine birding applications to help you quickly identify what you see. One is the Audubon Bird Guide, obtainable at audubon.org. A second is ebird accessible on the website ebird.org. A third is Merlin, found at merlin.allaboutbirds.org.
A less than technical tool we bring is a small shirt pocket sized notebook and a few pens to record what we see on our journeys. Afterwards, using ebird accounts we created, we document our findings. Ebird is a great way to track your discoveries over the course of any year and an infinite number of locations. Chestermere Lake is a “hotspot”, noted for providing quality birding. No less than 99 different species have been identified on and around the lake.
With binoculars, notebook and pens in hand, all one has to do is enjoy a wonderful walk around the north half of Chestermere Lake. Take time to explore the storm pond on the west side. Over the spring and early summer months, it’s amazing how many different species you will see. The bulrushes along the north west side as well as the canal provide hiding places for birds. Founders Point Pond, although small, always has a few birds to appreciate as well. Eventually, you may find you want to photograph birds and wildfowl. That’s a topic for a future column.
The key is to exercise, enjoy the outdoors and learn about our feathered friends with whom we share Chestermere Lake. Late April, May and June are glorious times to bird watch. Then its the fall migration south that catches the birder’s eye. And then, it’s time to keep warm, enjoy the company of friends, a cup of coffee and remember those walks you took and wait for next birding season.
