When Ken Burrell was about 10 years old, his father Jim took him and his brother Mike to the Wrigley Corners outdoor education centre in North Dumfries Township.

The boys were dedicated birdwatchers even at that young age, so when a brilliant gold bird flew up to Ken, they knew something out of the ordinary had happened.
The bird was a prothonotary warbler, a bird native to the eastern United States and found in Canada only in the most southern reaches of Ontario. It certainly shouldn’t have been flying around Waterloo Region.

“That was the bird that hooked Ken,” Jim said.

The boys, now in their 20s, inherited their fascination with birds from their father. Jim has been a birdwatcher since he was a boy going on fishing, hiking and hunting trips with his father.

“My younger brother and I spent a lot of time in duck blinds with nothing much to do. We weren’t very good hunters,” he chuckled.

Jim’s interest in birding grew after he moved to the Waterloo area. The Burrells’ Heidelberg property is planted with trees and shrubs that provide shelter and food for birds. It was Mike and Ken’s job to monitor what species were at the feeders for Project Feeder Watch.

In the mid-1990s they started going to Point Pelee in May to catch the spring migration of birds returning from Central and South America.

“That one-day excursion has now grown into a full month,” Jim said.

In fact, Ken will be doing data gathering for his bachelor’s thesis at Point Pelee this year. He’s working on a degree in environment and resource studies and wants to examine a phenomenon known as reverse migration. Occasionally birds that should be migrating north in spring will reverse direction and fly south in masses. It’s behavior the Burrells have seen for themselves: throngs of birds so thick they were flying straight at them, almost engulfing their bodies.

Ken believes it’s linked to bad weather, and wants to find out what variables – wind speed, temperature, cloud cover, barometric pressure – influence spring migration the most.

“Mike and Ken have far surpassed me,” Jim said of their interest in birding.

For the younger Burrells, their trips to Point Pelee led into Bird Studies Canada’s young ornithologists program, where they learned how to band birds and volunteered at the organization’s Long Point station. That subsequently led to membership in the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists.

For the past few years, Mike has coordinated the Christmas bird counts in Kitchener and Linwood. The counts happen across North America; volunteers count species and numbers of birds within a 15-kilometre radius over one day. The information is collected into a database that shows the population trends of winter birds over time.

The Kitchener count has been happening since the 1930s, while the Linwood count started in 2003. With its open fields, Linwood sees large numbers of wintering raptors – it’s one of the top five regions for certain raptors in North America. Eagles, rare in this area, are common in Linwood and one overwinters every year on the Conestogo River.

The Burrells also lead outings for curious birdwatchers. The next one happens Jan. 24 in Wellesley Township, where they’ll be trying to spot wintering raptors.

This winter has not been a good one for wintering birds; the cool, wet summer didn’t produce enough food for them and many opted to pass by or stay up north. Nevertheless, they’ll be hoping to spot rough-legged hawks, red tailed hawks and perhaps even the eagle on the Conestogo River.