Signs of Winter 8: The Great Backyard Bird Count!

American crow. Photo by D. Sillman

(Click on link to listen to an audio version of this blog …. Great Backyard Bird Count 2022

Starting next Friday (February 18^th) and running until the next Monday (February 21) the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society and  Birds Studies Canada are sponsoring their twenty-fifth annual “citizen’s science” project called “The Great Backyard Bird Count” (GBBC). This word-wide count of birds began in 1998 and has grown in scope and in participation with each passing year. Participants are asked to spend fifteen minutes either stationary at some observation point or walking through a habitat counting and identifying the birds they see. On-line checklists developed by eBird facilitate the reporting of these observations, and the compilation of the data from the observers seems to be nearly instantaneous!

If you are interested in participating in the count click here for more information:

The website that reported the results of the GBBC was changed this year. The more streamlined, simplified web presentations made it difficult for me to dig into the data, so I cannot give you as detailed a report on the count’s results as I have in past years. Some highlights of the 2021 bird count, though, included a record number of checklists turned in (379,726) and a record number of participants (over 300,000). There were  6436 species of birds noted in the 2021 count (not a record but still a very impressive number!), and observers for the count reported from 190 different countries!

American robin. Photo by D. Sillman

There was a distinct North America bias to the 2021 count (as has been the case since the count began) because almost two thirds of the checklists come from the United States. Pennsylvania, my old home state, by the way, went from its perennial fifth place  in total-number-of-checklists-per-state submitted to the count all the way up to third! Only California (almost always first) and New York exceeded the count response from PA! Way to go, Pennsylvania!!

Colorado, my new home state, was much further down the participation-by-state list with fewer than a third of the checklists turned in by Pennsylvania birders. Colorado, though, like in previous years, did report more bird species than were observed in Pennsylvania. We just need to get more people out counting and reporting!

Some highlights from the North American data in the 2021 count:

1. The mild weather all across North America in January (average temperatures were 6 to 11 degree F higher than average!) apparently allowed many far northern birds to move down into southern regions. Pine siskins, purple finches, red-breasted nuthatches, evening grosbeaks and common redpolls were all recorded from northern US sites far to the south of their typical winter ranges. How these birds fared when the extreme cold of February 2021 set in is not known.
2. Migrating red-wing blackbirds returning from their over-wintering ranges, possibly similarly under the influence of the warmer January, were observed much further north than usual for mid to late winter.
3. In Canada, a number of more southern birds were observed quite far north. These included: black-faced grassquit, crimson-collared grosbeak, golden-crowned warbler, streak-backed oriole, rufus-backed robin, Cuban pewee and the northern jacana.
4. A northern wheatear (a bird that breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and winters in Central Africa) was found overwintering in Ohio! Again, this was possibly due to the very mild January. It is unknown how these birds handled the extremely cold February!

Eastern towhee. Photo by D. Sillman

Last year was the first year for me to do my GBBC from my new home in Greeley, I only saw five species from my observation site overlooking my backyard (Canada goose, Eurasian collared dove, blue jay, black capped chickadee and dark eyed junco).  Much of the bird abundance in Colorado and its surprisingly high species richness comes from habitats along the rivers and around the reservoirs of the state. Water is the key to almost all asked and unasked ecological questions in Colorado! My heated birdbath does draw in quite a few local birds, but I don’t think that I have ever seen more than a dozen different species of birds within the boundaries of our neighborhood. By comparison, a few years ago I saw 17 different species of birds (in 15 minutes!) from my “sit spot” from the sun room in my Apollo, Pennsylvania house.

My backyard feeder and birdbath here have with increasing frequencies attracted chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, Eurasian collared doves, American robins, American crows, European starlings, northern flickers, dark-eyed juncos, goldfinches, downy woodpeckers and house sparrows usually singularly and typically in very small numbers. I do have a Swanson’s hawk, a red-tailed hawk and a harrier that occasionally soar by and a great horned owl that hoots from our pine tree at night and deposits regurgitated pellets out on my driveway. Bald eagles also occasionally fly over our neighborhood from their home territories along the nearby rivers.

Blue jay. Photo by D. Sillman

I have also seen magpies in the bushes across the street. There are also great flocks of Canada geese that fly over on their way to and from the small lake over at nearby Sanborn Park along with smaller flocks of mostly resident mallards and a few American coots. There are also large migrating flocks of ring-billed gulls that drop down to the water’s edge from time to time. I have also seen a few cormorants sunning themselves on posts around the lake. In any given fifteen minute interval, though, which is the time frame for the GBBC observation, I often see no birds at all to just one or two in my backyard. So I do not expect my GBBC to be very robust this year either.

Ruby-throated hummingbird. Photo by D. Sillman

But, that’s science, isn’t it? My Greeley neighborhood does feel a bit like a bird desert. We are out here on the semiarid plains and birds are most likely congregating near isolated sources of water. My GBBC data should reflect that. Maybe I will bundle up and go out the ponds along the Cache la Poudre River or the South Fork of the Platte and do my count. The species abundance reflected in the past GBBC data from Colorado is probably well expressed there! I could also go over to Sanborn Park and count a thousand Canada geese and dozens of mallards. If I do stay inside here at home, though, I hope at least the chickadees will show up to be counted!