Meet Yellowknife’s birdman

It’s safe to say Reid Hildebrandt is known as the bird guy in Yellowknife.

He organizes the city’s annual Christmas bird count with Ecology North, often speaks to northern media about birds, and is an active member of the Yellowknife Bird Arrivals Facebook group and the local birder community.

“Through little effort of my own, it’s kind-of become that,” says Hildebrandt, who was born and raised in Yellowknife and began birding when he was around six years old.

After so many years, he says it’s “the chase” that keeps him interested in the hobby as “there’s always something new to see.”

“There’s just such a diversity of experience when it comes to birds,” he says.

“There’s aspects of their behaviour that you may only see after five years of coming out and watching them, different courtship behaviours, different plumages.”

Other benefits of birding, Hildebrandt says, are that it keeps you mentally sharp and aware of your surroundings and it’s an enjoyable way to get physical exercise. In the month of May, the height of birding season, he spends seven or eight hours outdoors every morning.

He says the pastime also increases knowledge and helps scientists learn more as the climate changes.

“There’s so many changes,” he says. “Long-timers will often talk about the fact that magpies weren’t here 50 years ago, things like that.”

Walking in the forest off the Ingraham Trail, where local group Arctic Harvest taps trees for syrup, Hildebrandt’s ears perk up. He hears a sora rail, which he says “can be quite noisy at times,” but which you will rarely see.

“My ears are very important to me for that,” he says of birding. “Even for those that can’t recognize birds by sound, hearing something is your first clue that something is there.”

Beyond listening, Hildebrandt says being patient and curious, studying birds and taking photos and audio recordings are key parts of birding.

Hildebrandt says the location for our trip, just past the Dettah road turnoff north of Yellowknife, is an ideal place to watch for birds – it’s accessible and has a diversity of habitats. There are breeding ponds, marshy areas, and deciduous and coniferous trees.

Through the morning, Hildebrandt hears and sees a nesting osprey, a red-winged blackbird chasing a raven, nighthawks, northern shovelers, mallards, a lesser scaup, a kestrel, green-winged teal, horned grebe, red-necked grebe, lesser yellowlegs and American wigeons.

He also spots two buffleheads in the air, a male chasing a female.

“Probably hopes that she’ll lay another egg or two,” he remarks.

He hears Swainson’s thrush, “one of the most beautiful songbirds Yellowknife has to offer,” singing in the birch trees across a pond. Then he hears a Canada jay, which he says are the earliest nesting birds along with ravens. He describes them as “very social birds,” explaining that young birds will continue to hang out with their parents throughout the summer.

“There’s so many different breeding strategies employed by birds, especially in a marsh setting like this,” he says, standing at the edge of a pond.

“For those yellowlegs, the female will lay the eggs, have a nest. But around the time that the chicks hatch, the female will actually leave and go start their molting, their getting ready for migration, and the male will finish supervising the chicks until they’re independent.

“On the other side of things you have the waterfowl, where these male ducks with their brilliant colours and showy nature, they’re just waiting around to make sure that the eggs are laid and then they’re off.”

Even as an experienced birder, Hildebrandt says there are still things he has yet to experience, like getting to see baby ducks jumping out of a nest.

“Some species, like the bufflehead I’m seeing at the back of that pond, they’ll breed in cavities and in woodpecker holes sometimes 30, 40 feet above the ground,” he says.

“The babies, they hatch fully feathered, ready to go and swim – but they’re 40 feet above the ground. They can’t fly, so they tumble out and bounce off the ground. That’s something I’d love to see.”