Birder makes rare sighting of a white-tailed ptarmigan during the 2025 Christmas Bird Count in Whitehorse

One of the best gifts Cameron Eckert got for Christmas was a sighting of four white-tailed ptarmigan.

Eckert, who is with the Yukon Bird Club, said these birds had never been seen during the Christmas Bird Count in Whitehorse, but that changed this past Boxing Day.

These birds are known to live in southern Yukon, but being a high alpine bird, Eckert said it takes a difficult climb in the winter to reach their habitats.

He said he made a special point of getting up to Haeckel Hill, about 20 kilometres from Whitehorse, at sunrise on a -35 C day.

When he got there, he said he saw “very small tracks” that could only have been made by a white-tailed ptarmigan, which are rare to find in the winter because of their colour blending into the snow.

He said he then followed a little trail along the tracks and about five to six metres ahead were the birds, perched on the snow.

“[They were] very tame sitting there and absolutely stark white and beautiful,” he said.

The Christmas Bird Count runs from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5 each year, and is considered an early-winter bird census. The 125-year-old tradition sees people of all ages gather at a designated area on a given day to count all the birds they see within a 24-kilometre diameter.

Eckert said most of the counts in Yellowknife and Whitehorse took place on Boxing Day.

The count allows for tracking of winter birds that are common to the area, as well as rare or unusual visitors. Eckert said it helps researchers understand population and habitat changes, and draw up conservation strategies.

The State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report, a partnership between Birds Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, showed a 28 per cent decline in birds found in the Arctic.

The report also said that there was a 42 per cent decline in shorebirds. Many of them breed in the Arctic where the effects of climate change are felt more starkly, including a disruption of food sources such as berries and insects.

Yousif Attia, who co-ordinates the Christmas Bird Count in Canada, said bird breeding can be affected by climate change.

“The summer is quite a short confined period of time. So if there's a disruption in when the snow melts or when birds can actually get to their breeding grounds, this can really affect their populations over time. … It’s important to document these changes,” he said.