The final list for 2011 in Franklin county stands at 259 native bird
species. Actually, that is just where the list stood in late October!
Really, we haven’t added a single one since then---unless someone
forget to report something. We didn’t count, birdwise, on our November
turning out like a normal October, and December like November.
Obviously, missing out on a normal first month of winter deprived us of
chances at many species we expected or at least had reason to hope for.
Somewhere we missed another entire month's worth of new species!
Birds of the north have hung back. In January, tundra swans and
sandhill cranes are *still* coming through in good numbers. Waterbirds
are apparently continuing to bask in northern waters normally frozen by
January. A good warmer season up north lasted much longer than usual,
apparently.
I think it’s only fair that if climate warming is going to short us on
birds of the north now, we should at least have seen more birds from the
south earlier. Like painted buntings. Neotropic cormorants. Sandwich
terns. Swainson’s warblers. Red-cockaded woodpeckers. Groove-billed
anis. It’s only fair. Oh, we did get a few of these, if you remember
the royal tern, the purple gallinule. But all those wayward waterbirds,
those gone gulls, and those wanton winter finches—-they really hurt us
in what could have been a record run. Or maybe this was still a record;
I don't know.
But we still did very well, thanks to the sharp-eyed and enthusiastic
observers who birded here and told the rest of us about them. We saw,
and reported, what was here. Now for the first time we have an idea
about how many birds can show up here when we pay attention.
As for the future, we get only twelve months for a year, and it’ll be
hard if we have new birds in only ten of them. That’s something else we
can learn from.
The list of birds seen and birds missed can be found on the Columbus
Audubon site at
http://www.columbusaudubon.org/production/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=675&Itemid=216
.
Thanks to all,
Bill Whan
Columbus
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