MAT-SU — For those looking for another cabin fever reliever, Bob Winckler has your solution.

“You can go birding 365 days a year,” the Mat-Su Birders club president said. “You aren’t limited like you are with hunting.”

Winckler started bird watching, or birding as he calls it, in the late 1970s on the island of Adak. He moved to the Valley in 1994 and helped found the Mat-Su Birders in 1999. When the original president left a year later, Winckler stepped into the role.

Photo courtesy Delesta Fox/Mat-Su Birders Mat-Su Birders club president Bob Winckler talks to interested Valley residents at a past Garden & Arts Festival in Palmer.

“We have elections every other year, but no one else ever raises their hand,” Winckler said.

Nine years into his term in office, Winckler keeps the club committed to taking part in international bird counting efforts while to supporting new enthusiasts. All the while, he keeps Mat-Su Birders decidedly apolitical.

Many people start birding by simply feeding birds in their backyard, Winckler said. As their curiosity increases, Winckler and the group offers resources for them to become more knowledgeable about what they are seeing. The club meets the second Wednesday of every month at the Palmer Library and usually has a guest speaker give a bird-related presentation.

For those wanting to take their bird watching out of their backyard, Winckler said the group organizes periodic trips around the Valley. They tend to focus on the Jim Lake area, Hatcher Pass and the Palmer Hay Flats, with spring trips to Gunsight Mountain in Eureka being the farthest the group travels.

“We have suggestions about where people can go. We get people coming in from out of state looking to go birding all the time,” Winckler said.

He said one of the reasons the club formed in the first place is to provide stability to the annual Christmas Count done in association with the National Audubon Society. What started in New York in 1900 as a way to fight the rapid depletion of bird species has now spread to all parts of the globe, he said.

The count started in the Valley in 1979. The center point was set at the Four Corners area where Trunk Road meets the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. All the birds are counted within a 15-mile diameter circle. This year’s count is scheduled for Dec. 20.

“There is no fudging from that circle year to year,” Winckler said. “Ours covers a lot of suburban areas as well as the pure wilderness of the Palmer Hay Flats.”

The count is then reported to the Audubon Society, and has been every year since 1979. With clubs around the world doing the same thing, Winckler said what’s created is the largest citizen-reported scientific database in the world.

But besides the Christmas count and a few other projects, Winckler said the Mat-Su Birders purposely avoids affiliation with particular issues.

“When we started the club, we said all we wanted to do was bird,” Winckler said.

This has allowed the group to attract people with a wide range of interests, everyone from the most avid hunters to strong supports of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

An old wing shooter himself, Winckler said he now prefers a good pair of binoculars over a shotgun. Hunting and birding are not at odds, he said, but at 73 years old, he likes to make his own pace and doesn’t mind avoiding the mess of field dressing.

“It’s a perpetual treasure hunt. It’s something you can do all your life,” he said.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.