Great Backyard Bird Count: Day 4 #GBBC

Yesterday was mostly gray with a bit of snow and rain. This seemed to make some birds stay under cover, and parts of the local parks became inaccessible due to flooding. On the upside, it brought a lot of birds to the feeders, so there was a steady stream of common birds to watch.

The birds that captured my attention the most were the Mourning Doves. A group of them alternated between perching out on a wire despite the unfavorable conditions and foraging under the bird feeders. Seeing them backlit on a wire against a gray sky emphasizes their shape: a small head and bill, a puffed up body (almost round on some of the birds), and a long, narrow tail. Even with barely any color, they were still recognizable as Mourning Doves.

This Mourning Dove was showing off its warm brown breast feathers and white-tipped tail feathers as it took shelter in the branches of a tree. The feature I found particularly intriguing was the white puff above its bill. It seems that the doves can fluff out those feathers in a way I had not previously noticed. Now matter how many times I have looked at a bird, there is always something new to see!

Yesterday was the last day to observe birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count, but you can continue to enter checklists from the weekend until March 1. So if you watched birds this weekend but have not entered them into the GBBC website yet, make sure you enter them this week!

Great Backyard Bird Count: Day 3 #GBBC

Yesterday I walked through my local patch again to look for new birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. I did find one that was new for my GBBC lists this year: Carolina Wren. Other than that, I found mostly the same birds as I did on Friday. It is clear that migrating Canada Geese, Mallards, and Ring-billed Gulls are all staging in the area right now. All three continue to appear in higher numbers than they did for the previous few weeks. The goose with a collar on its neck appears to have moved on, since I did not spot it among the 400 geese in the park today. One treat was a close look at some American Robins running and searching for worms in the wet grass. One is pictured above; I have a few more photos at the bottom of this post.

In the evening I took a walk around the neighborhood to see if I could hear any owls. Previously I have heard Great Horned Owls calling a few blocks away, and I am pretty sure that some live in the area even though I have not heard them here for a few years. I had walked a few walks when I was stopped short by the sound of an Eastern Screech Owl calling. I listened and heard it give its tremolo call several more times over the course of a few minutes. After listening long enough to be sure I was hearing an owl rather than some other sound, I kept going in the hopes of find the larger owl species, but I came up empty-handed. Eastern Screech Owl was a new bird for me in New Jersey; I had previously seen them in DC and heard them in Massachusetts.

Great Backyard Bird Count: Day 2 #GBBC

Yesterday morning I did some birding for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy, and that wind suppressed a lot of bird activity, especially songbird activity and activity in open areas. Gulls did not seem particularly bothered by the wind. They just hunkered down in an open field or played in the wind. Crows, too, seemed to find the wind to their liking. Not many other birds braved the gusts, though. Some Canada Geese and Common Mergansers flew over, but they seemed to have some trouble keeping their formations aligned. Songbirds stayed under cover. I heard a few recognizable cheeps coming from the bushes, but none of their sources popped into view.

There are still two days left for the Great Backyard Bird Count, so there is still time to record and submit checklists if you have not done so already. If you are curious about what birds have been reported so far, you can explore the results on the GBBC website.

Great Backyard Bird Count: Day 1

Yesterday morning I did some birding for the Great Backyard Bird Count. First, I did a short count in the yard. The highlight was a flock of Fish Crows passing overhead. Fish Crows have mostly been absent this winter, except for a stray individual here and there. So it is exciting to see their return, and yesterday's flock was the first I have seen since sometime last year. Blackbird flocks have also returned this week, and a few were around the yard yesterday. They are not yet at their peak migration numbers, when flocks of a thousand or more will sometimes appear in the trees around the house.

I followed that with a walk around the local park. There were no redpolls this time, unfortunately; those birds seem to appear and disappear quickly around here. I did see a lot of sparrows, including a couple of American Tree Sparrows, which I had not seen at that location so far this year. There were more Fish Crows; in fact the Fish Crows outnumbered the American Crows yesterday. A few hundred blackbirds were spread over several flocks. Somewhat surprisingly, Brown-headed Cowbirds outnumbered the others, but Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles both were well represented. Other returning birds included Killdeer, which has been mostly absent this winter. This week the local gull population has been shifting. For most of the winter, Herring Gulls were in the majority by far, with small numbers of Ring-billed Gulls and Great Black-backed Gulls. This week, Ring-billed Gulls have had a clear majority. Yesterday they outnumbered Herring Gulls about 5:1.

One other interesting bird was this Canada Goose, wearing an orange neck collar with the code H8W1. It was with a group of about 20 geese. Most of them were wearing metal leg bands, but this was the lone goose with a neck collar. I took some photos of it and reported the code on the collar to the Bird Banding Laboratory. It will probably take a few weeks before I get a response, but I will post it here when I do.

Great Backyard Bird Count 2011

The upcoming weekend is Presidents Day weekend, and that means that it is time again for the Great Backyard Bird Count! This count is an attempt to record all of the birds found across the United States and Canada over a four-day period. Doing this requires participation from thousands of observers across the continent. During this weekend, people count and report birds in their backyards, in local parks, in wildlife refuges, at the beach, in the mountains, in cities, on farms, or anywhere else where they happen to encounter birds. Anyone can participate, whether a skilled field birder or someone who just started paying attention to birds. In fact, this count more suited to amateur participation than most bird surveys since it uses simplified protocol and checklists are reviewed promptly by one of the many volunteer regional reviewers.

The bird count website has instructions on how to participate. Find a time and a place where you can watch birds for at least 15 minutes. Record the birds that you see and note the number of each species. Then visit http://www.birdcount.org and submit a checklist with your sightings. You can submit as many checklists as you want during the weekend of the count, and each time that you watch birds should be recorded on a separate checklist. If you have further questions about the protocols, check the FAQs.

For more information:

• My blog posts on Great Backyard Bird Counts from previous years
• How to participate
• Highlights from the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count
• Top ten lists for 2010
• 2010 Results from each state and province

Finally, check out the incredible tally for St. Petersburg, Florida, which reported 1.45 million American Robins over the four days of the count.