Rock Cut Christmas Bird Count 2021's Journal

January 14, 2022

Rock Cut Christmas Bird Count 2021 Results

Hello everyone

To describe this year's count in one word, I think I would choose: challenging. Mainly because that has a more positive connotation than "miserable" does. The snow got hard enough by noon that almost everyone was forced to retreat. Because of that, most of the lists were low in species and numbers, but it seemed like everyone had one good bird, or a decent haul of one of the common birds that got us a much higher count than I would have expected. Also big thanks to the people who went out the next day after the snow and got us some count week birds, that helped a lot this year. Also thanks to those who uploaded photos.

To go over some wins we had:
First surprisingly, new birds were added with Ring-necked Duck and Northern Pintail.
2nd we had new high counts for Northern Harrier, American Goldfinch, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Black-capped Chickadee, Eurasian Collared-Dove & American Kestrel. Owls were also high: Great Horned and Barred tied previous high counts, and for Saw-whet we usually get one, this year we had 2, and Screech, usually 3 or 4, this year an impressive 7.

12 field counters in 9 teams. 6 feeder counters.
Miles driven: 210
Miles walked: 39.75
Miles biked: 11
Miles owling: 54
Total miles: 314.75
Hours driven: 18.75
Hours walked: 29.5
Hours biked: 3
Hours Owling: 6.5
Hours at feeders: 17.75
Total hours: 75.5
Total Species: 66 (5 of these are count week, compared to last year's 68 5 of which were also cw)
Total individuals: 8913 (Compared to last year's 14634) I think the main reason this is so low is we didn't have good numbers of waterfowl in the area.

cw: Count Week. Species that were found the 3 days before or after count day that no one found on count day.
: New high count
*
: New for count

cw Greater White-fronted Goose
1 Snow Goose (Blue Morph)
20 Cackling Goose
3753 Canada Goose (Way below average)
1 Gadwall
2 American Black Duck
183 Mallard
3 Northern Pintail**
3 Ring-necked Duck** (Surprised we;ve never had these)
cw Lesser Scaup
6 Common Goldeneye
2 Common Merganser
105 Wild Turkey
2 Northern Harrier*
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
4 Cooper's Hawk
5 Bald Eagle (2 adult, 2 immature, 1 unknown) Straight average, but a third of what the last 2 years had.
22 Red-tailed Hawk
cw Rough-legged Hawk
73 Ring-billed Gull
126 Herring Gull
1 Iceland Gull (Thayer's)
9 gull sp
192 Rock Pigeon
4 Eurasian Collared-Dove*
205 Mourning Dove
7 Eastern Screech-Owl* (Way up)
6 Great Horned Owl (tied previous high count)
5 Barred Owl (tied previous high count)
2 Northern Saw-whet Owl* (Usually we get one, but two teams scored this year)
1 Belted Kingfisher
55 Red-bellied Woodpecker (compared to the last couple of years, woodpeckers were low)
54 Downy Woodpecker
12 Hairy Woodpecker
6 Northern Flicker
1 Pileated Woodpecker
7 American Kestrel*
cw Merlin
94 Blue Jay
152 American Crow
1 Horned Lark
314 Black-capped Chickadee* (continuing to rise)
4 Tufted Titmouse
9 Red-breasted Nuthatch
46 White-breasted Nuthatch
21 Brown Creeper (tied for 2nd high count)
2 Winter Wren
5 Golden-crowned Kinglet*
18 Eastern Bluebird
1 Hermit Thrush
22 American Robin
1292 European Starling
294 Cedar Waxwing (several large flocks found)
cw Snow Bunting
152 American Tree Sparrow
1 Fox Sparrow
666 Dark-eyed Junco (Ominous. Didn't beat last year's 715, but still a continuing rise for these)
cw Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon group)
4 White-throated Sparrow
27 Song Sparrow
139 Northern Cardinal
187 House Finch
3 Purple Finch
5 Common Redpoll
5 Pine Siskin
242 American Goldfinch*
248 House Sparrow

Again thanks to all those who went out in the snow to find birds. Hopefully we'll have better conditions next year.

Joel

Posted on January 14, 2022 04:00 PM by neylon neylon | 0 comments | Leave a comment

December 26, 2021

Start of Count Week

This is the first day of count week. I went out to Candlewick Lake today and had Greater White-fronted Goose, Snow Goose, Cackling Goose, and a possible Oregon morph Junco.

Posted on December 26, 2021 12:57 AM by neylon neylon | 0 comments | Leave a comment

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