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Re: Great Backyard Bird Count weekend




>
>GBBC is under way. I helped the Cornell folks with their NC and SC
>checklists this year; least I can do for my alma mater... I notice,
>though, that as usual some hard-to-believe reports are making their list,
>even though they've removed most of the unlikely species from the
>fill-in-the-blanks forms and forced people to write them in. A Wood
>Thrush? In NC, in February? How about FIVE American Tree Sparrows, all
>together in one flock? And three separate reports of Black-capped
>Chickadee? This weekend hasn't exactly been the kind of weather where
>that many people go birding in the mountains, and I can't remember too
>many folks with backyards above 4,000 feet... I'm more inclined to
>believe the Western Tanager report than any of the species above, both
>because there have been multiple reports of WETAs at feeders in our
>region this winter, and because there aren't such obvious possibilities
>for error with the tanager. I'm guessing Hermit Thrush, Chipping
>Sparrows, and Carolina Chickadees unless further details come along. The
>GBBC folks do say, above the write-in box, that write-in species will be
>reviewed before including them in the database. I sure hope so...

Hi, Josh & others-

Thanks again for your help with the Carolina checklists. Getting local 
contacts involved has helped the GBBC process tremendously this year.
That said, there is no way to eliminate all errors as they come in. Editors 
here at the Lab and at Audubon have already begun editing the data, but 
with tens of thousands of reports coming in, it will take time. We 
appreciate your patience!

Thanks for participating, Josh. And thanks to everyone else on this list 
who is sending in your bird reports. The count runs through today (the 
19th) and you have until March 1 to get all your reports in. www.birdsource.org

Good birding!

Allison Wells
Cornell Lab of Ornithology


>I actually had time for tragically little birding for the first two days
>of the GBBC. Friday, the best I could do was note the Song Sparrows
>singing outside my girlfriend's house. Saturday morning was a washout
>after staying up too late Friday night. For unrelated reasons, Frank and
>I had already postponed our plans to hit the CBBT for the second straight
>weekend; and wouldn't ya know it, Ned Brinkley re-found the Western Grebe
>there yesterday!
>Saturday evening, my friend Tracy Feldman invited me over to help him
>look for Chorus frogs in his backyard. We certainly heard plenty of them,
>and a Spring Peeper or two to boot, but couldn't actually *see* a single
>one! We did see lots of Song Sparrows in the grassy clearcut behind his
>house, and a Northern Flicker along the edge, and I heard some Swamp
>Sparrows in the same wet areas as the frogs. Most intriguing was a wren
>which Tracy thought sounded like a Sedge Wren, but darkness was falling,
>and Tracy had a gig playing fiddle at the ArtsCenter, so we had to leave
>without getting a good look at the critter (Tracy played a solo show at
>the Regulator bookshop earlier that afternoon, after which I found and
>purchased a birder's guide to northern California for my trip there this
>coming May). I left this one off my GBBC submission form.
>
>I was up too late again on Saturday (doing laundry this time), and so
>Sunday morning was another loss. This afternoon, I spent a couple of
>hours walking around Occoneechee Mountain. I was hoping for some signs of
>spring. I was nearly shut out on insects: no odes, no leps, only a
>bee-fly (sirphid, I think) and a midge or two. The only herps were more
>Chorus Frogs. None of the spring wildflowers were out yet. The only hints
>of spring were the abundant catkins hanging off of the willow trees by
>the upper pond.
>
>As usual, Occoneechee was frustratingly quiet bird-wise; the thick green
>tangles of Mountain Laurel look like great bird habitat, but they were
>silent; and the ponds harbored six Canada Geese, but no ducks or other
>waterbirds. I did find reasonable numbers of landbirds at four places.
>The back corner of the parking area harbored dozens, if not hundreds, of
>White-throated Sparrows; despite the huge numbers, I could pick out only
>one sparrow of another species, a Song. Many Golden-crowned Kinglets here
>as well. The trail along the edge of the overgrown field, uphill from the
>ponds, was loaded not only with both of these sparrow species but also
>Meadow Voles; I stood still enough to get several good looks at the
>rodents, and had a hard time telling whether the birds or the mammals
>made more of the leaf-shuffling noises in the surrounding brush. Just
>downhill from the observation platform, I came upon a number of
>Ruby-crowned Kinglets and a few Carolina Wrens, with one Hermit Thrush
>tagging along. The busiest spot was Brown Elfin Knob, with kinglets of
>both stripes, Pine Warblers, chickadees, titmice, a male/female pair of
>Eastern Bluebirds, and (believe it or not) the only two woodpeckers I saw
>all afternoon, a Downy and a Red-bellied.
>
>I then swung by the house long enough to confirm that the Rufous
>Hummingbird was still around. My housemate Kristina Pfannes confirmed
>that it had been around Saturday as well.
>
>Lastly, I led a few Duke students and professors to the Butner Gamelands
>in search of lekking American Woodcocks. We admired massive numbers of
>waterfowl and blackbirds flying overhead to their roosts as we waited for
>the light to recede to woodcock lekking levels. The blackbirds were
>mostly Red-winged, but with many Eurasian Starlings and Brown-headed
>Cowbirds mixed in, and probably Rusty Blackbird too. The waterfowl were
>mostly silouetted against the sunset, but we managed use their calls to
>ID Canada Goose, Mallard, Wood Duck, and Green-winged Teal. Finally,
>Tracy heard the first "peent" and we started seeing the rotund little
>shorebirds making their display flights. Before too long, we heard Great
>Horned and Barred Owls as well. We watched until the peenting stopped,
>then headed for Honduran food and home.
>
>Good birding,
>
>Josh
>
>
>
>Joshua S. Rose
>Duke University
>Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)
>
>jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
>http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/