They call him Bird Dog.
Binoculars hung from his neck, but they seemed to only serve as backup.
The shape of a wing, a flying pattern, maybe a spot of color or a chirp, often tell Bird Dog all he needs to know.
“There goes a Cooper’s hawk, chased by Anna’s hummingbird,” he said Sunday morning, pointing to the sky where an untrained eye simply would see two specks flying high above.
It was a cold, drizzly day near Vancouver Lake Regional Park and Arden Hagen, 68, of Vancouver lived up to his moniker. Hagen helped with the annual Christmas Bird Count, a tradition driven by tens of thousands of Audubon Society volunteers who collect information in an effort to assess the state of North America’s bird population.
“It’s not often you see a hummingbird chasing a hawk,” he said.
Hagen has tallied the birds in this region, along this same route, for close to two decades. He was joined by another avid birdwatcher, Jan Verrinder, 64, of Vancouver. The Audubon Society uses the bird tallies collected by the volunteers to inform their conservation efforts and to keep tabs on the health of the world’s bird population.
Along with his wife, Sherry, Hagen holds the Washington state record for the most bird species spotted in one year: 370. The previous record, which stood for 11 years, was 359.
All told, Hagen estimates he’s seen 3,741 bird species worldwide.
He’s spotted sandgrouse in Kenya and a bare-shanked screech owl in Panama. He’s been attacked by a Le Conte’s thrasher in Bakersfield, Calif.
“But this story is not about that,” he said. “This is about the bird count.”
The regional count encompassed a 15-mile radius that includes Sauvie Island.
Hagen and Verrinder surveyed the Vancouver lowlands, making tally marks next to bird species from the northern flicker woodpeckers to a spotted towhee sparrow.
The landscape appeared practically barren.
But Hagen stopped every few feet to point out a camouflaged black-capped chickadee in a tree or a song sparrow in the brush.
Look up!
Nine cackling geese flew overhead.
What’s that noise?
European starlings, red-winged blackbirds and a few robins occupied a tree more than 500 yards away.
Despite the gusts of wind, the mist and the plan to spend the entire day on the hunt for different bird species, it was a mellow day in Hagen’s bird-watching history.
“He’s hardcore,” Verrinder said.
It wasn’t easy breaking the statewide record for the most birds spotted in a year, after all. The Hagens dedicated their year to the effort.
Once, near the end of that record-setting year, they were in Spokane when they were told a brambling bird was spotted 400 miles away. They drove from Spokane to Blaine to Vancouver all in one day.
They’ve braved foul weather, spent nights sleeping in their car, logged hundreds of miles, all in the name of bird watching.
But on that day, they saw the brambling bird.
