Christmas Bird Counts

By the time the end of the 19^th century rolled around, a tradition had emerged on Christmas day. Many North Americans participated in what they called "side hunts", in which they competed to see how many birds they could kill, regardless of whether they had any use for the carcasses and of whether the birds were beneficial, beautiful, or rare. In December 1900, the U.S. ornithologist Frank Chapman, founder of Bird-Lore (which became Audubon magazine), proposed counting birds on Christmas instead of killing them.

That year, 27 observers took part in the first count in 25 places in the United States and Canada, 15 of them in the northeastern U.S. from Massachusetts to Philadelphia. Since then the counts have been held every winter, usually with increasing numbers of observers. For instance, the 101st count, in the winter of 2000–2001, involved 52,471 people in 1,823 places in 17 countries (but mostly in the U.S. and Canada). During the 113th count (winter 2012–2013), 71,531 people participated in 2,369 locations. 

 

The counts are set up by local bird clubs and Audubon societies. For three weeks each year (14 December to 5 January) tens of thousands of birders head out to conduct the CBC. These counts are cooperative efforts to get the best count of birds in a single 15-mile diameter circle. The circle is loosely associated with a park, town, or part of a city and the same circle is used each year. Volunteer birders assemble and are divided into teams and are assigned a segment of the count circle to spend as much of the day as it takes to cover that area and count all the birds of each species that they find. The Bend Christmas Count was last Sunday and the Madras Christmas count was yesterday. I usually try to do two or three counts in the local area. Some of the Oregon counts are very remote such as the one held at the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in South East Oregon.  This year we are not finding large numbers of birds but species counts remain high.  

Barrow's Goldeneye pair found on the Madras Christmas Bird Count

 

Here is the remaining birds to list for this year before school ends. The list will continue starting in January, and now the challenge is on, as I try to find the less common birds and the specialty birds from the South West. Some of them of course will be common birds for that area but will be new to the list. Have a great Holiday Break and I look forward to continuing Mr Sutherland's Amazing Bird Race in the New Year with lots of cool Birds of the Week.

251 Golden-crowned Sparrow, Pilot Butte, Bend, Oregon

252 Lewis's Woodpecker, Shevlin Park, Bend Oregon, (catchup)

253 Gray-crowned Rosy Finch, Smith Rock State Park, Oregon

254 Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Portland, Oregon

255 Fox Sparrow, Portland, Oregon

256 Pinion Jay, Hatfield Lake, Deschutes County, Oregon

257 Eurasian Wigeon, Basket Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Dallas Oregon

258 Snowy Owl, Dallas, Oregon,

259 Glaucous-winged Gull, Columbia river

260 Bushtit, Tumalo Oregon

261 Western Bluebird, Tumalo, Oregon

262 Northern Shrike, Hatfield Lakes, Bend, Oregon

263 Barrow's Goldeneye, Deschutes River, Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Jefferson County, Oregon

264 Dunlin, Lake Simtustus, Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Jefferson County, Oregon

Bird of the Week, 15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azGEYpChlVk


So, here we are, the final Bird of the Week in the Great Bird Race for 2014. Next week you will be taking a break and enjoying the company of family and celebrating the birth of our Lord, the creator of all the birds. It is through His love for us that He has given us all the beautiful creatures to enjoy and that is one of the main reasons I like to watch birds because it always reminds me of Him.


The Heron family consist of what we call waders and is actually divided into three subgroups, Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns. I tried to find out what the difference is between Herons and Egrets and no one could actually separate them definitively so it's probably less confusing to just group them like the bird books do in the group of all the waders.


In North America, there are actually seven different Herons or Egrets that can appear in a white phase. Four of them are always white and the other three have a white phase like a previous bird of the week, the Reddish Egret.  (hint) This Bird of the Week has one distinctive feature that does not occur on any of the others.   Separating the Herons and Egrets  involves comparing bill shape and color and leg color, and once you check these features, it is not difficult to determine which of the waders you are looking at.


In this video you will see one of the feeding strategies that the waders use, which is to scurry around and scare up fish so they can see them and hopefully spear one. I was hoping to get a successful hunt on video but that didn't happen while I was filming.  This should not be a difficult ID


This week, we did another bird chase to hopefully find another rare bird for the list. Snowy Owls breed in Northern Canada and Alaska and usually do not come south of the boarder into the lower forty-eight states very often. The boarding states usually get a few birds but when food sources are scarce, the owls will come farther south and some years there is an invasion of sorts where lots of them show up. Last year was the biggest invasion of Snowy Owls on record and this seems to be continuing somewhat, there have already been three separate Owls discovered in Oregon this winter. One showed up in Dallas, Oregon week ago Saturday so Monday the 8th, we went over and were lucky enough to find it. This might be the only one I will see during the big year.

Snowy Owl in Dallas, Oregon, Dec 8, 2014

With the start of the new year, Mrs Sutherland and I will be hitting the road again. Our plans are to head south to Texas where we are picking up a small camper trailer that we ordered and rather than spend the money to have it delivered we are using the money for a road trip and hope to spend six to eight weeks in mostly warm sunshine in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. These four states have most of the North American bird species so this should go a long way to reaching my goal of finding a minimum of 500 bird species by August 31, 2015. Looking forward to some really cool birds of the week and maybe a surprise foreign bird of the week as well.

Watch for my final post of the year toward the end of this week and I will discuss Christmas Bird Counts and post the latest additions to the list.  


Good Luck, happy New Year and happy birding.

Bird of the Week, 14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLHXit4az1o

Well here we are, the school year is almost half over and 2014 is rapidly coming to a close.  I hope you have been enjoying this birding adventure half as much as I have.  It has been a pleasure to challenge you with new birds, many of which you may never see, at least without taking a road trip.  I look forward to the new year as the Great Bird Race continues.  If all goes as planned, we will be traveling the Southwest and exploring the many wonderful trails and interesting places along the way.  And of course great birds.

This weeks bird was found at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri and it is challenging because it has a very close cousin that is found in Deschutes County.  This is an example of using range maps to differentiate which one it could be, but it pays to really look close for the subtle differences because this bird is found occasionally in Oregon and it does sometimes interbreed with its cousin so the offspring present a real challenge. So, range maps are a guide but where the ranges overlap, they are not a good tool.  In this case, since the bird was found far from where it overlaps with its cousin, the range map does become useful. 

 Look closely at all the holes in this tree, this guy has been spending a lot of time and the holes are a sign of the special way they feed which is reflected in its name.  I will point out that this is an adult male.  Oh, and the other part of its name is completely lacking on this bird and can be very subtle on many of this species. 

Extra points if you can tell what bird is calling loudly in the background :=)

Have a great week and Happy birding.  

Bird of the Week, 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fbb72et4MI

Good morning students, this weeks bird is one of my favorite Northwest birds.  In fact, I think it should be the Oregon State Bird.  Our current state bird, (do you know what it is?) is shared by five other states and I think we should have our own unique bird.  This bird would be well qualified because it is only found in the US in very northern California, Oregon, and Washington.  Most of their nesting is done in Canada and Alaska but I do believe they also nest at higher elevations in Oregon and Washington.   They can be found fairly easily in Deschutes County in winter.  They are related to Bluebirds and Robins.  (big hint) Some of you may already know what it is but maybe not, they don't come to feeders that much because like all thrushes, they eat worms and insects in the summer and fruit in the winter.  A good place to look for them is in decorative Crab Apple trees,  or Mountain Ashe. Good luck and happy birding. 

Bird Of The Week 12

This Bird of the Week  likes people and in many towns there is one in every yard it seems, in the summertime.

Time for another bird of the week. I really enjoyed meeting everyone last week and seeing all your hard work in your journals. You seem to be starting to get the mystery of birds sorted out a bit. I am hoping you now see why I enjoy birding so much. It is often a challenge to figure out what a bird is and just when you think you know them all pretty well, one comes along that just stumps you.


This weeks bird enjoys a pretty wide range in North America but its range  eliminates most of the northern states and Canada. This bird is placed in bird books in a group of families that are sort of miscellaneous hodgepodge of birds. We have already had a thrasher (you remember the Brown Thrasher) which is one of the families in this group. They range all the way up the California coast but are absent inland in Northern California. Jackson County and Klamath County do get a few of these bird every year so they are not completely absent in Oregon but pretty hard to find for an Oregon list. We have had a couple of records of one straying into Deschutes County but it is a rare bird alert if one shows up. Five states have this bird as their state bird and South Carolina used to have it as a state bird but they decided that the Carolina Wren would make a better state bird. This should give you enough clues that it will be an easy bird.


As you recall, one of the tools for bird identification is to listen to the song. All bets are off with this guy cause he knows the songs of ten to fifteen birds that live nearby and this repertoire changes from region to region as some of the songs they sing in one part of the country would be of birds they would not hear if they lived in another part of the country. But then the very fact that he is doing all these songs, gives away who he is.  So these birds are pretty popular, as you can see by the state bird count, and I think I have pretty much given it away at this point. Have fun and happy birding.


I apologize for the quality of this video, I took it outside my motel in Branson, Missouri and lots of cars started driving by, but you can hear him pretty well and see him fine. Listen closely and you can hear a second bird trying to outdo him in the background.  Among other birds I here in his repertoire, are Carolina Wren, Robin, and Cardinal. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxnZYMDUp8&feature=youtu.be

Anybody Ever Hear of a Bean Goose?

Nestucca National Wildlife Refuge in Tillamock County, Oregon in the middle right of the center field is the flock that contains the rare Tundra Bean-goose

What does the word vagrant mean to you? As with most English words, there are several meanings that have common ground but the synonyms that apply to birds are wanderer, drifting, maybe lost. In biology, vagrancy applies to animals that appear well outside their normal range.


With bird watchers, this is the holly grail. Once you have found all the birds that live and breed in your area, getting a new bird for the list starts to get tough. If a rare bird shows up in Oregon, several lists can grow simultaneously. It can go on your State list, your County list, and possibly or probably your life list if it is from far away. It will also increase your year list. So you can see why birders get excited by the report of a vagrant bird.


So what makes birds go off course? This is something that remains a bit of a mystery for biologists. Some are studying the idea that their biological makeup becomes altered and the area in their brain that tells them which direction to go for migration is somehow changed sending them in the wrong direction.

Tundra Bean-goose flying with Cackling Geese

Many of the birds that are found far off course are juveniles and are inexperienced so they just “make a wrong turn” so to speak. They might get in with the “wrong” crowd, birds of similar species that are headed to their own wintering ground and they just follow them and end up vagrants. Another closely related situation is weather. Huge storms can just blow them way off course. In fact you will find birders becoming strangely excited when big weather patterns are coming their way because they know that it is inevitable that some birds that they may have never seen, could get blown in by the storm.


This past Sunday morning, a mega rarity showed up in Oregon. A Goose called the Tundra Bean-goose was found with a flock of Cackling Geese at the Nestucca National Wildlife Refuge in Tillamook County, Oregon. This is a fitting place for this bird to show up because the refuge is set up as a wintering ground for geese, mostly the Aleutian Cackling Goose. It is very likely that the Bean Goose got in with a flock of Aleutian Cackling Geese and migrated down with them instead of heading to it's normal wintering ground in Japan. It will be interesting to see how long it stays at the refuge, presently it seems very happy to hang out with it's cousins.

Tundra Bean-goose, November 11 2014, Nestucca NWR

Tundra Bean-goose, November 11 2014, Nestucca NWR

So you can see why I decided to head to the coast on Tuesday to see this bird. It might be the only one I ever get a chance to see and probably one of the most rare sightings in North America in a while.

Tundra Bean-goose in flight

Meanwhile, here are more birds to add to the growing list of birds on the Amazing Bird Race.


235 American Pipit, Bear River National Wildlife Refuge, Utah
236 Carolina Wren, Chattanooga, Tennessee, (somehow I missed this one)
237 California Quail, Bend, Oregon
238 Ferruginous Hawk, North Texas, (another one I missed)
239 Rough-Legged Hawk, North Texas, (another catchup, not sure how these got overlooked )
240 Lesser Goldfinch, Bend, Oregon
241 Ring-necked Duck, Bear River National Wildlife Refuge, Utah
242 Tundra Bean-goose, Nestucca National Wildlife Refuge, Tillamook County, Oregon
243 Pacific Wren, Nestucca National Wildlife Refuge, Tillamook County, Oregon
244 Cackling Goose, Tillamook County, Oregon
245 Common Goldeneye, Tillamook County, Oregon
246 Horned Grebe, Tillamook County, Oregon
247 Brandt's Cormorant, Tillamook County, Oregon
248 Pelagic Cormorant, Tillamook County, Oregon
249 Western Gull, Pacific City, Oregon.
250 Varied Thrush, Suttle Lake, Oregon

Bird of the week 11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKHHPbLMdRo

Good morning Students.  This week I am presenting the bird of the week at Three Sisters Christian School in Deschutes County, Oregon.  I was going to put off posting the bird but I have been told there might be others following the blog so I will stick to my Monday posting. 

This little gut challenged me considerably.  I was hiking the trail by Jacks Creek this summer when I became aware of his singing and he really sounded close but I tried for ten to fifteen minutes to find him without luck.  I am not sure how I finally discovered him but there he was a mere ten feet away singing his heart out on his nest.  I have never heard a bird singing on the nest but it was pretty neat. 

He belongs to a family of birds that is similar to warblers as they have distinctive songs and love to sing.  They are generally much plainer than warblers. He might be a bit more challenging but one of his main field marks is very visible in this video even though we don't see most of his body.  I will add a couple of photos so you can see the entire body.

Good luck and happy birding.