I also joined a "yardsquad" challenge last week, which is as close as you can get to a competitive team sport in birding. There are 7 teams, each with 11 players scattered around the world. The goal is to see as many species as possible in your radius (up to 5 miles), between August 24th and the end of October. Your eBird lists are shared to a joint team account and the team with the highest collective species list at the end of the challenge wins.
To make the teams a sorting algorithm that uses eBird data made a "predicted species list" for each player, which is meant to even it out. My area was predicted to have 94 species during the challenge.. and I passed that in the first week haha. My goal is to got to 150, which is totally possible I think. Below I included a link to the the "scoreboard"..
It's something fun to do this fall anyway!
Now on with the post..
- Aug 30th
I was out in the yard from sunrise until 08:30ish. It was a fairly cold morning (well relatively, 16°C) and the birds seemed to take awhile to "wake up". There weren't a ton of birds around, but I still managed to get 39 species while I was out. Highlights were Philadelphia Vireo and a lone Pine Siskin that flew overhead.. only my 3rd one in Bruce this year actually.
Other sightings included;
- 2 American Black Ducks
- 2 Rock Pigeons (very uncommon for the yard)
- 2 Eastern Wood-pewees
- 1 Cape May Warbler
- 2 Bay-breasted Warblers
- 2 Scarlet Tanagers
That evening I had a few Common Nighthawks, an Eastern Screech-owl and a big (over 60) flock of Bobolinks...
- Aug 31
Up at sunrise and again I stayed out until around 08:30.. and I got 39 species again!
Kind of weird.. different birds than the previous day though, including a nice Olive-sided Flycatcher. There was also a bit of a morning flight going on, so that was cool.
Highlights listed below;
- 6 Ring-necked Ducks (early and rather random)
- 1 Rock Pigeon (getting common!)
- 2 Sandhill Cranes
- 1 Red-tailed Hawk
- 1 Golden-crowned Kinglet
- 16 Purple Finches
- 2 Black-and-white Warblers
- 16 Tennessee Warblers
- 5 Cape May Warblers
- Sept 1
Out at 06:40.. which seemed early to me, since I had been up late the previous night listening for flight calls. I recorded 41 species on my morning watch, but it felt slow compared to the last few days (even though I had more species). Oh yeah, there were also swarms of blood thirsty mosquitoes that chased me all morning.. the worst they've been all year actually.. fun...
Highlights included;
- 16 American Black Ducks
- 8 Wilson's Snipe
- 1 Common Loon
- 1 Great Blue Heron
- 1 Osprey
- 1 Cooper's Hawk
- 1 Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (singing!)
- 16 Bobolinks
- 8 Tennessee Warblers
Not too shabby I guess.
- Sept 2
It was raining in the morning so I slept in and didn't really go outside until the afternoon.. when I saw a grand total of 13 species (nothing exciting besides more mosquitoes).
That night was more productive however, as I heard a Barred Owl, an Eastern Screech-owl and my first Veery of the fall.
- Sept 3/4
Away from the yard for both days..
- Sept 5
I was out before sunrise and was greeted by the nocturnal flight calls of Swainson's Thrushes, not a bad start to the day. I missed Swainson's in the spring, so this was a new addition to the yard yearlist! It was a cool morning (16°C), which seemed to have a negative impact on the mosquitoe numbers and I was barely "bugged" all morning. I ended up staying out until 10:00, as the birding was productive and the weather was nice. There was a decent morning flight, my best this season in the yard and I ended up with a solid 51 species.
A Sharp-shinned Hawk spent most of the morning playing hide-and-seek with the local Blue Jays, but it seemed like nobody could figure out who was "it"
Instead of highlight birds I'm going to list my morning flight totals, because that was the highlight for me..
Species | number of individuals
Mallard - 2
American Black Duck - 1
Common Loon - 1
Blue-headed Vireo - 1
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 11
Swainon's Thrush - 2
Cedar Waxwing - 25
Purple Finch - 11
Pine Siskin - 1
Bobolink - 1
Red-winged Blackbird - 6
Common Grackle - 4
Ovenbird - 1
Black-and-white Warbler - 3--
Tennessee Warbler - 12
Nashville Warbler - 4
American Redstart - 3
Cape May Warbler - 4
Magnolia Warbler - 4
Northern Parula - 1
Bay-breasted Warbler - 9
Black-throated Blue Warbler - 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler - 3
Black-throated Green Warbler - 1
Not a bad count for my yard!
- Sept 6
As usual, I was out in the yard from sunrise - 8:30. The morning flight was pretty blah and I only had about 15 warblers (mainly Bay-breasted and Yellow-rumped), as well as a lone Common Loon. I was surprised to see I ended up with 40 species, but they really add up quickly this time of year.
The big highlight of the morning was the Purple Finch movement however. I usually see about 5 or 10 a morning, but on this day I had 68 birds! Besides the 2 "locals", they all appeared to be actively migrating south ~ I guess the finches really are moving!
New additions to yard yearlist since my last post;
- Lesser Yellowlegs
- Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
- Swainson's Thrush
Yard yearlist at September 6th - 161
Also I was mainly doing What's This Bird Wednesday as a way to put content out over the summer.. so, I'm going to do it once a month now.
No comments:
Post a Comment