OHIO-BIRDS Archives

January 2008

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From:
Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 2 Jan 2008 09:03:59 -0500
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Our four-man Kingston CBC team had a tough time finding even 75% of our
usual species number on New Year's Day. The unrelenting stiff winds,
falling temps, and unfilled feeders made finding many species tough.
Still, we may have seen more birds than anyone yesterday.
        A few years back we estimated over 80 thousand common grackles with
other blackbirds in a single flock in our Ross Co territory; some were
dubious till they saw our white-spangled vehicle.  This year we stood
wondering as an awesome river of birds hurried overhead for about ten
minutes; ten minutes later we watched as more birds, clouds of them,
rolled over one another in solid black waves in a cornfield. It reminded
me of accounts of passenger pigeons feeding.  We saw six or eight other
smaller groups--still in the five figures--later in the day, but did not
count them as they could easily have represented splinters of the larger
mass.
        One of the better ways we employed to count them was to quickly develop
a sense of how long it took a thousand birds to pass overhead; it came
out to about three seconds, and matched fairly well results using other
methods of estimating huge gatherings. We agreed we could reliably
report at least a quarter of a million birds.
        Different flocks differed in composition. The "river" of birds had
numbers of smaller black birds--brown cowbirds and red-winged
blackbirds, and when some perched we saw a few rusty blackbirds--and the
birds eating spilled corn had all four plus a few starlings, but varied
in the percentage of the smaller birds. The two large flocks we watched
in oak groves were close to a hundred percent common grackles; perhaps
acorns are too big for smaller birds to handle.
        A friend from Cincinnati told me they had a great CBC the other day,
but missed common grackle. Just one would have tied them with the Toledo
CBC's excellent total species count. Sorry, we didn't intend to hog them
all...
Bill Whan
Columbus



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