Blustery Day

Weather today is more reminiscent of March than February….

some sun, some wind, some big black clouds….

we were ‘hailed’ on before we got back home.  Apart from the background calling of Red-wing Blackbirds, there wasn’t a sound of a bird anywhere.  I’d seen a small long tailed hawk, probably a Sharp-shin out over he grasslands and there had been a few Bufflehead and Green-wing Teal before an off leash dog showed up….but that was it for birds today…

So seemed a good time to point out some interesting statistics from the Backyard Bird Count.  I found the species that showed up on the most checklists – this is for all of North America – to be surprising – it was the Red Cardinal! showing up on 40,254 checklists!  This is a bird we don’t have much hope in seeing in our area, although you never know.  Mourning Doves were second, Junco 3rd (not surprising) and Downy Woodpeckers next…another surprise.  For sheer numbers, the most birds of any species counted were Snow Geese with a remarkable 2,965,391 counted.  Red-wing Blackbirds were next with 1,643,729 (at least a hundred of those here in our backyards!) and Canada Geese were 3rd with 771,999.

The state with the most species was California with 319 and Texas was a close second with 318 but it was Missouri with the most actual birds – 2,150,609 (maybe that is where the snow geese were).

In British Columbia there were 189 species with 1,675 checklists submitted.  Victoria had the most checklists at 139 but amazingly, the second highest participation was from Clearwater with 117 checklists submitted.  By comparison Agassiz had a pitiful 7 and 4 of those were mine!…with a total of 48 species so the other person counting found 10 different species that I didn’t get.  Anyone interested in checking into further statistics can do so by going to the Backyard Bird Count site.