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As Chris mentioned earlier today, January 1 is a great day for birding because everyone's current year list resets to 0. For those of us who keep year lists, that means that almost every bird we see, today and for the next few weeks, has a good chance to be a new species for the year.
With that in mind, I went out for a short walk around my local park this afternoon. Birds were pretty scarce, probably due to the extreme cold (for this area, anyway). Usually there are a lot more gulls and waterfowl, but not this afternoon. I saw a lot more Song Sparrows than usual, as well as a big flock of Dark-eyed Juncos. Common Mergansers only showed up within the last week; I think that the relatively mild weather must have kept them farther north longer than usual.
Below is the eBird output from this afternoon's walk. The one day bird missing is a House Sparrow I saw shortly before leaving the house.
| Location: | Donaldson Park | |
| Observation date: | 01/01/09 | |
| Number of species: | 24 | |
| Canada Goose | 35 | |
| American Black Duck | 1 | |
| Mallard | 1 | |
| Common Merganser | 3 | |
| Great Blue Heron | 1 | |
| Turkey Vulture | 2 | |
| Ring-billed Gull | 85 | |
| Herring Gull | 4 | |
| Great Black-backed Gull | 3 | |
| Mourning Dove | 3 | |
| Red-bellied Woodpecker | 2 | |
| Downy Woodpecker | 2 | |
| Northern Flicker | 1 | |
| American Crow | 1 | |
| Fish Crow | 4 | |
| Tufted Titmouse | 1 | |
| White-breasted Nuthatch | 1 | |
| Northern Mockingbird | 1 | |
| Song Sparrow | 14 | |
| White-throated Sparrow | 4 | |
| Dark-eyed Junco | 27 | |
| Northern Cardinal | 3 | |
| House Finch | 21 | |
| American Goldfinch | 2 |
