Greater Roadrunner. We see these daily on the hill, pretty much year-round. |
We participated in the Big Backyard
Bird Count this past weekend, for the first time. As I’ve stated before, I’m not the birder here on
the hill; my husband is. But I got us into this adventure, and he jumped right in
with me (thanks, honey!).
I had so much fun counting birds. It appealed to three parts
of my basic character: The Accountant,
The Competitor and The Nature Girl.
In the bird count, the observer tallies the most birds of a
species that she sees at one time. The Accountant really likes tallying things.
She is ever motivated to see more things to tally. At the end of the
observation period (at least 15 minutes), The Accountant got to enter her
tallies into a database. Then she could look at the tallies of all observers in
her zip code, state and nation. Fun times!
The Competitor liked finding more and more species to add to
the tally list. On Monday (the count ran from Friday through Monday) when
the weather was lovely, she spent a lot of time outdoors gardening and watching
– for more bird species to report. One other birdwatcher was submitting reports
for this zip, so the race was on to find a species that the other counter had
not seen.
The Competitor's and Accountant's activities dovetail nicely.
She also enjoyed learning new nature stuff.
Now, I shall reunite those three parts for the rest of the
post.
What did I learn? I identified a new bird at our
feeder: a pine siskin. We’ve not seen one before. Pine siskins like to hang out with goldfinches, of which we have
had a surfeit this year.
I also learned how to tell the difference between a turkey
vulture and a black vulture (the black has white wingtips; turkey has white
wingtips and lower fringe of wings). I also heard a black vulture bark. Who knew? Well, birders knew, obviously.
Here is my checklist from Monday:
Black
Vulture - 9
Red-shouldered
Hawk - 2
White-winged
Dove - 8
Mourning
Dove - 1
Greater
Roadrunner - 2
American
Crow - 1
Carolina
Chickadee - 1
Tufted/Black-crested
Titmouse - 3
Chipping
Sparrow - 2
Dark-eyed
Junco - 5
Northern
Cardinal - 2
House
Finch - 2
Pine
Siskin - 2
Lesser
Goldfinch - 3
American
Goldfinch - 3
The only visitors not seen were the robins (we’ve seen lots
this year), and the scrub jay (which turned up today, of course).
If you are interested in learning more about this fun nature
activity, visit Big Backyard Bird Count. To see what species were seen in
what numbers where, follow the link to "explore the results."