Hello Everyone, The 31st Wallaceburg CBC took place yesterday, December 27th amidst cloudy skies with a brisk west wind and temperatures hovering just above the freezing mark for the entire day. The previous day's 14 degree temperatures and heavy rains melted ALL the snow in the area (up to 30 cm in some spots). This swelled the creeks, flooded the fields and spread most of the birds all over the place, making them hard to find.
Here's a brief summary: Twenty four participants and 4 feeder watchers found 83 species on the count day, which is above the 81 average over the last 10 years. There were 13653 individual birds seen, a few thousand below the average for the past 10 years. New to our CBC this year was an AMERICAN WOODCOCK flushed by Larry Cornelis and eventually seen by all 7 members of his party. This brings our cumulative total for the 31 years to 139 species. We did manage to find high counts for three species this year and we tied three others: SNOW GOOSE 22 (one flock - previous high of 3 in 2005) RUDDY DUCK 2 (only the third time recorded) BALD EAGLE 11 (previous high of 8 last year, numbers are increasing each year) AMERICAN COOT 2 (ties 2006 - 8th record) NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRD 1 (2nd record - 1 in 2001) BROWN THRASHER 1 (2nd record - 1 in 2003) So far, we have tallied 4 species that were seen during Count Week only (3 days prior and 3 days after but not seen on count day): NORTHERN SHOVELER, MERLIN, NORTHERN SHRIKE (only our second miss in the past 20 years) and COMMON YELLOWTHROAT. Perhaps there will be more waterfowl or other species seen in the coming 3 days. There were some notable misses this year, namely: CANVASBACK (only the third miss in the past 25 years) SHORT-EARED OWL (second year in a row - previously not missed since 1996) LONG-EARED OWL (2nd miss in the past 20 years) CAROLINA WREN Finally, a few thank you's are in order. Thanks to Wendy and Becky Cornelis for once again providing a fantastic hot meal after our long count day. Thanks again to Georgette Cornelis for providing her house for the meal and compilation and also for being such a welcoming host (you may remember her for being the host of last year's VERMILION FLYCATCHER at this time). Steve Charbonneau _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS including how to unsubscribe visit http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdssetup Posting guidelines can be found at http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdsguide Visit the OFO Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists
