Thirty-eight field participants and several feeder watchers took part in Isabella's 33rd Xmas Bird Count yesterday. Highlights included, as with other area counts, a record-smashing number of common redpolls (1480). The Grosshuesch-Lind party alone almost single-handedly beat our previous record by tallying over 1000 common redpolls. Boreal chickadees were easily found throughout parts of the count circle, also resulting in a new record of 48, well above our previous high of 34. The five golden- crowned kinglets found, a species tallied on only four previous Isabella counts, was also a record. The species count (23) was a little above our average, but the total number of individual birds (2517) was our second- highest ever.
Complete (unofficial) results: 9 ruffed grouse 4 pileated woodpecker 13 hairy woodpecker 65 downy woodpecker 4 black-backed woodpecker 63 gray jay 75 blue jay 83 common raven 308 black-capped chickadee 48 boreal chickadee 5 white-breasted nuthatch 165 red-breasted nuthatch 5 golden-crowned kinglet 1 northern shrike 1 purple finch 93 pine grosbeak 1480 common redpoll 1 hoary redpoll 32 pine siskin 50 American goldfinch 4 red crossbill 6 white-winged crossbill 2 dark-eyed junco Thanks to all the hardy counters who didn't let the six inches of snow that fell during the day deter them. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
