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FAIRBANKS - There were no eye-popping sightings in this year’s Christmas Bird Count in Fairbanks.

“It was a little bit of a lackluster bird count, but people enjoyed themselves,” said Gail Mayor, president of the Arctic Audubon Society. “It was a little chilly in some places.”

About 100 people braved temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero to participate in the 48th annual count on Saturday.

While the number of species counted — 22 — was on the low side, the total number of birds reported — 9,665 — was fairly high, thanks to a robust crop of redpolls, Mayo said.

A total of 4,811 redpolls were tallied by counters, the largest redpoll count since 1997.

“The redpoll count was really high in some areas,” she said.

The biggest surprise in this year’s count, which is part of a continent-wide citizen science effort spearheaded by the National Audubon Society to track bird populations across North America, wasn’t what counters actually saw, but what they didn’t see.

There were no spruce grouse, no northern goshawks, no boreal or great-horned owls, and no dark-eyed juncos reported.

Only 989 ravens were reported, the first time since 1997 that the raven count has fallen to less than 1,000. Last year, more than 1,500 ravens were counted.

The reason for the low number of ravens, according to Mayo, was a lack of birds at the Fairbanks North Star Borough landfill, an area where ravens typically congregate.

“The dump was apparently not active that day,” Mayo said. “They had it covered up so there weren’t many ravens over there.”

In addition to the many redpolls, the number of white-winged crossbills also was way up. Counters recorded a total of 585 white-winged crossbills, the largest crossbill count since 2000. Last year, only four white-winged crossbills were counted.

The high number of white-winged crossbills is likely related to this year’s spruce cone crop. They are an eruptive species that follow food, and spruce cones are their preferred diet, Mayo said.

“They’re where the cone crop is,” she said.

A few unusual migrants that had been seen around town in the weeks leading up to the bird count failed to show, if they are still around. Among them were brown creepers, Fox sparrows and Lincoln’s sparrows.

“It might have been too cold for them,” Mayo said. “They might have been hunkered down, if they’ve survived this cold.”

Fortunately for counters like Mayo, the temperature didn’t bottom out until Sunday, the day after the count.

“It was better than doing it Sunday when it was really cold,” she said.

Other interesting tidbits from this year’s bird count included:

• A total of 71 counting parties covered a total of 661 miles — 584 by car, 43 on foot, 10 by ski or snowshoe and 25 by other means of transportation.

• Counters spent a total of 182.5 hours counting, one-third of which was logged by feeder watchers.

• A total of 14 willow ptarmigan were counted, the most since 1997, which backs up reports of people seeing more ptarmigan around town this winter than normal.

• This year’s count of mallards in the Chena River was only 237, down from 325 last year.

• Among the more rare finds by counters this year were a black-backed woodpecker (1); American robin (1); red-breasted nuthatch (3); northern shrike (4); and black-billed magpie (8).

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.