Posts
Last week I pointed out this weekend's Great Backyard Bird Count and encouraged people to participate. This afternoon I put my money where my mouth is and did a few hours of counting birds at my local patch, the National Arboretum. This weekend turned out to be the coldest of the winter; I think the low today was the lowest temperature so far this year.
I started off with my best sighting of the day: two chipping sparrows in the brush near the bonsai house. While common in the summer, these sparrows move farther south during the winter. In a warm year like this one, some will winter here. One great blue heron was fishing in Heart Pond while a large flock of starlings and a few robins and blue jays foraged in the fruit trees diagonally across the intersection.
The Asian Gardens were fairly productive today. In addition to the large flocks of white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos, I found a yellow-bellied sapsucker and a hermit thrush. With birds flying back and forth and in and out of bushes, getting an exact count can become difficult. My solution, today and on Christmas Bird Counts, has been to estimate the number to the nearest ten if a hundred or less of the species is present. White-throated sparrows are particularly difficult to count, both because of their cryptic coloration and because of their habit of foraging in the most tangled underbrush where eyes and binoculars cannot penetrate. I expect that most totals reported this weekend for the species will be undercounts.
I rounded the walk off with a stop near the Capitol columns. Unfortunately the red-headed woodpecker did not make an appearance (though I know it was seen yesterday). Instead I found a brown thrasher that peered with its yellow eye at me from inside a bush.
| SPECIES SEEN: 34 | |
| Great Blue Heron | 1 |
| Canada Goose | 20 |
| Mallard | 10 |
| Common Merganser | 3 |
| Turkey Vulture | 1 |
| Red-shouldered Hawk | 1 |
| Red-tailed Hawk | 2 |
| Ring-billed Gull | 50 |
| Mourning Dove | 1 |
| Belted Kingfisher | 1 |
| Red-bellied Woodpecker | 6 |
| Yellow-bellied Sapsucker | 1 |
| Downy Woodpecker | 5 |
| Northern Flicker | 1 |
| Golden-crowned Kinglet | 1 |
| Carolina Wren | 3 |
| Northern Mockingbird | 3 |
| Brown Thrasher | 1 |
| Hermit Thrush | 1 |
| American Robin | 20 |
| Carolina Chickadee | 10 |
| Tufted Titmouse | 8 |
| White-breasted Nuthatch | 2 |
| Blue Jay | 20 |
| American Crow | 100 |
| Fish Crow | 3 |
| European Starling | 50 |
| House Finch | 1 |
| American Goldfinch | 20 |
| Eastern Towhee | 1 |
| Chipping Sparrow | 2 |
| White-throated Sparrow | 100 |
| Dark-eyed Junco | 60 |
| Northern Cardinal | 12 |
