I had a couple hours this afternoon to visit DeerCreek again this afternoon. This time I went armed with a pencil and some paper to do some real counting. I haven't been diligent about counting recently, and felt that it was a good time to put my guesstimates to the test. The first area where I spent some time was along an approx. 1 mile stretch of floodplain fields between the reservoir and Mt. Sterling. My sparrow tallies for that area were :

Chipping - 15
Field - 62
Vesper - 3
Savannah - 5
Song - 104
Lincoln's - 9
Swamp - 58
White-throated - 30
White-crowned - 71

The mumbers aren't 100% exact since I often flushed mixed flocks and couldn't always be sure what each and every bird was before they all plopped back down again, but it's pretty close to within 10% for each species I think. Covering 2 miles might have double that number and checking out different habitats would tilt the ratios one way or another for different species. My rough guesses would have been pretty close if I didn't do any counting. Other birds that I counted on that stretch included :

44 Yellow-rumped Warblers
4 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
10 Golden-crowned Kinglets

After that I went over to the beach to count the gulls. That's where my rough estimates were way off. Gulls counted actually sitting on the beach included :

1 LAUGHING GULL
98 Bonaparte's Gulls
504 Ring-billed Gulls
4 Herring Gulls
1 Common Tern

I would have guessed about half that many. Sometimes it pays off to actually count to refresh yourself on what what 500 Ring-billed Gulls really looks like. The gulls on the beach were probably less than a third of the gulls present on and over ther water in the reservoir.  I always hope for Franklin's Gulls there at this time of year, but the Laughing Gull was nice !   There very well may have been some Franklin's too, but they weren't within view if they were there. At least 10 Tree Swallows were seen from the beach, with many more undoubtedly further off.  240 Turkey Vultures were present at the beach, marina, and points in between. The brushy thickets near the beach and marina were also loaded with more sparrows (including E. Towhees) , kinglets, and Yellow-rumps, etc. waiting to be counted on another day.

Bob Royse


Robert Royse
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www.roysephotos.com

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