Thirty-two birders, most of them K awartha F ield N aturalists members, participated in the Kawartha Christmas Bird Count on December 28th, 2016. The count circle—centered at Fell, north of Fenelon Falls—has been surveyed, officially, with records going to the Audubon database, since 1999. Unofficially, a count was conducted for some years before that but the results were not sent to Audubon.
This year we had no canoeists , as there was very little open water. The temperature was between -3 and -5 degrees Celsius all day with a slight breeze, light snow and patches of sunshine. It was not as slippery as I had feared as fresh snow had covered the icy patches. Despite the lack of open water , w e had two good water birds: a new species, a Northern Pintail, at Rosedale and a single Belted Kingfisher (male) found in its usual patch of open spring water in Somerville Township . We also had singles of Northern Flicker—the first since 2000, Northern Shrike and Cooper’s Hawk. Two Red-winged Blackbirds and 2 Brown Creepers were good finds . The only winter finches were American Goldfinches. We had a pair of Gray Jays coming to a feeder. This is the 9th time in 10 years we have had Gray Jays on the count. Altogether we saw 44 species, just below the average of the previous 10 years: 46.7. The high from past years is 56 species and the low is 39. We saw 5,610 individual birds, which is quite good, as the high from past years is 6,092 (discounting an unusual year of 11,507 because of very mild weather) and the low is 2,932. Dan Bone, Compiler, ONKW CBC _______________________________________________ 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
