A balmy day yesterday for a Christmas Bird Count. I generally do three rather obligatory CBCs every year (I know a lot of you think they are a lot of fun; remember that for me, they are a busman's holiday). This particular count takes place in a really nice rural area, and Kingfisher (my wonderful husband) and I do two large private parcels. Here is part of one, along the Raisin River in Jackson Co., MI. We'd just flushed a Barred Owl.
On another, we have to make sure to wear our orange vests, as there are too many deer poachers in the area. Here is Kingfisher listening for birds in a marsh. In what must be a first for a Michigan CBC, we heard chorus frogs calling! Tadpoles were also active in open water.
Our best bird of the day was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, pretty uncommon here in winter (range map). The count should also break the record for Golden-crowned Kinglets, as well as Yellow-rumped Warblers and Wild Turkeys. The high temperature was 55F, one degree shy of the record.
Hi Blogmom. It looks as though I'll be participating in my first CBC this year. I'm organizer, compiler (and probably the only participant) in Arctic Bay's first CBC. I'm pretty sure it is the most northernly CBC. Unfortunately there won't be much light to get things done, this being our darkest time of the year.
Posted by: Clare | 18 December 2006 at 06:08 PM
I'm pretty sure there won't be chorus frogs either. I'll keep my eyes and ears open none-the-less.
Posted by: Clare | 18 December 2006 at 06:15 PM
Interestingly, Golden-crowned Kinglets were also common this year on the Freeport CBC on the upper Texas coast (many years they're rare or absent). Wonder why they would be common in both places?
Posted by: Bill | 28 December 2006 at 09:54 AM
Perhaps high productivity on the breeding grounds? My fall banding seemed to indicate good numbers of boreal birds.
Posted by: Nuthatch | 28 December 2006 at 10:23 AM