North Central Illinois Ornithological Society

The weather was frigid yet sunny. We had 11 counters (down from 19 the previous year) but still covered a good deal of ground. We found 11 new species for the count area bringing the two-year total species to 58.

We managed to find all seven species of area woodpeckers which is always a cool triumph especially in winter. A Peregrine Falcon was a nice addition as well.

Waterfowl numbers were WAY down do to hardly any open water which also explains the major decrease in Canada Geese numbers.

Full list of birds:

American Crow – 92
American Goldfinch – 49
American Kestrel – 4
American Robin – 2
American Tree Sparrow – 92
Bald Eagle – 2 (1 ad 1 imm)
Black-capped Chickadee – 142
Blue Jay – 37
Brown Creeper – 8
Canada Goose – 1,138
Cedar Waxwing – 25
Common Goldeneye – 2
Cooper’s Hawk – 3
Dark-eyed Junco -154
Downy Woodpecker – 37
European Starling – 576
Hairy Woodpecker – 7
Horned Lark – 25
House Finch – 45
House Sparrow – 598
Lapland Longspur – 3
Mallard – 140
Mourning Dove – 118
Northern Cardinal – 90
Northern Flicker – 1
Owl Sp. – 1
Peregrine Falcon – 1
Pileated Woodpecker – 3
Purple Finch – 3
Red-bellied Woodpecker – 15
Red-headed Woodpecker – 1
Red-tailed Hawk – 10
Ring-billed Gull – 1
Rock Pigeon – 149
Rough-legged Hawk – 1
Snow Bunting – 5
Swamp Sparrow – 1
Tufted Titmouse – 3
White-breasted Nuthatch – 37
White-throated Sparrow – 1
Wild Turkey – 10
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – 2
Eastern Bluebird – 2
Ring-necked Pheasant – 1

Total Species: 44
Total Individuals: 3,637

Most species were found in lower than normal numbers. The exception was the roadside birds of open country – Horned Lark, Lapland Longspur and Snow Bunting. They were pushed to roadsides in good numbers by the snow cover. We completely missed White-crowned Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Great Blue Heron, Pine Siskin and Black Duck. However, new count records were set by small margins for Eastern Bluebird with 15 and Snow Bunting with 424. Two Peregrines set a new record and 28 Bald Eagles tied a record set four years ago. When this count started 20 years ago, we commonly missed Bald Eagle entirely. Those big boys have become pretty common in a short time span!

1633 Canada Goose

195 Mallard

13 Common Goldeneye

10 Common Merganser

12 Ring-necked Pheasant

38 Wild Turkey

28 Bald Eagle (8 ad, 20 imm)

2 Sharp-shinned Hawk

10 Cooper’s Hawk

65 Red-tailed Hawk

6 Rough-legged Hawk

8 American Kestrel

2 Peregrine Falcon

16 Ring-billed Gull

14 Herring Gull

704 Rock Pigeon

341 Mourning Dove

1 Eastern Screech- Owl

5 Great Horned Owl

2 Barred Owl

4 Belted Kingfisher

4 Red-headed Woodpecker

102 Red-bellied Woodpecker

187 Downy Woodpecker

27 Hairy Woodpecker

9 Northern Flicker

1 Pileated Woodpecker

183 Blue Jay

3463 American Crow

551 Horned Lark

365 Black-capped Chickadee

40 Tufted Titmouse

6 Red-breasted Nuthatch

149 White-breasted Nuthatch

62 Brown Creeper

1 Carolina Wren

1 Winter Wren

6 Golden-crowned Kinglet

15 Eastern Bluebird

11 Hermit Thrush

21 American Robin

902 European Starling

362 Cedar Waxwing

1 Yellow-rumped Warbler

262 American Tree Sparrow

3 Fox Sparrow

6 Song Sparrow

5 White-throated Sparrow

750 Dark-eyed Junco

211 Lapland Longspur

424 Snow Bunting

451 Northern Cardinal

1 Common Grackle

5 Brown-headed Cowbird

1 Purple Finch

265 House Finch

171 American Goldfinch

951 House Sparrow

I have received all of the field team reports and all but two of the feeder reports. The final (mostly) total is 65 species, which is slightly below average for the past 10 years.

Highlights were Chipping Sparrow, Brown Thrasher, Winter Wren (2), Eastern Meadowlark, Eastern Bluebird (2), and 4 Northern Shrikes. New totals for high species numbers were counted for Black-capped Chickadee (677), American Goldfinch (653), Brown-headed Cowbird (112), Bald Eagle (29) and White-crowned Sparrow (6). Fox Sparrow tied the high with 8.

On the low or missing side, there were no Wilson’s Snipe for the first time in many years, no Common Goldeneyes or Common Mergansers, no Carolina Wrens no Yellow-rumped Warblers or Hermit Thrushes, and only 3 Ring-necked Pheasants!

A full list of the species and numbers will be sent to all participants with my compiler comments, and they will also be available on the National Audubon website after I post the final results there in a few days. Thank you to all who participated.

Happy New Year!

Dan

Merry Christmas and greetings to all,

We are missing a few of our usual Christmas counters for this year, but I think the count circle is pretty well covered. As I write this, the snow is still falling steadily. If you are participating in the count tomorrow, please don’t take any chances with your personal safety. Depending on what the weather does, driving and walking may present challenges. Just do what you can do without risk and keep track of your mileage and hours. If it’s too hard to do much walking the number of walking hours will be down and the number of birds found will reflect that. That’s why we keep track of the effort expended. It’s not worth frostbite, injury or car accidents. Be safe. Good luck, I hope you all have fun and find interesting birds.

Barbara

I have mailed forms and maps to all team captains during the past week. The last went into the mailbox yesterday, 12/11. The captains will call you to arrange meeting time and place, etc. If you have volunteered for the Rockford count, but don’t hear from your captain by Tuesday, 12/15, please call me at 815-968-4732. I’ll follow up to be sure that you are contacted. Thank you.

The Rockford CBC is Saturday, December 19.

The Kishwaukee CBC is Sunday, December 27.

The Rock Cut CBC is Sunday, January 3.

If you haven’t signed up for one or all of these counts, please contact Dan or Barbara Williams for Rockford or Kishwaukee and Eddie Callaway for Rock Cut. If you want to watch your feeder, please contact us to see if your house/feeder is within one of our count circles. We’ll send you a form.
Thank you for your help.

Six inches of soggy snow, lots of ice, persistent rain and heavy fog created some really challenging conditions. Both the birds and the birders would have rather been somewhere else. The low total of 52 species and the exceptionally low total of 6982 individual birds are certainly due to the weather. The average number of species for the last ten years is 64. The average number of individual birds for the last ten years is 24,452.
I give great credit to all of you who went out and counted. We spent about a normal amount of time in the field although a higher-than-normal percentage was spent in vehicles rather than on foot. I’m sure we set a new count record for the number of hours spent under umbrellas.
32 counters participated in the field, plus 5 feeder watchers. 3 parties went out early or late to look for owls.
We broke old the old count record of 22 Common Mergansers with a big flock by the 15th Ave. bridge and smaller groups scattered down the river totaling 93. New count records were set by small margins for Eastern Bluebird with 14 and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker with 3.
A huge thanks to all of you for your time and effort. This was the 19th year of the Kishwaukee count. You can see the results of this count, and all of the others, at the National Audubon Society’s website at http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc. The dates for the Rockford and Kishwaukee counts in Dec 2009 will be the 19th and the 27th. I hope you can join us for some better weather.
Here’s the list of birds we found:

1204 Canada Goose
191 Mallard
16 Common Goldeneye
93 Common Merganser
9 Ring-necked Pheasant
8 Wild Turkey
1 Great Blue Heron
6 Bald Eagle (4 ad, 2 imm)
3 Cooper’s Hawk
21 Red-tailed Hawk
5 American Kestrel
1 Merlin
1 Peregrine Falcon
11 Herring Gull
372 Rock Pigeon
297 Mourning Dove
2 Eastern Screech- Owl
1 Great Horned Owl
3 Belted Kingfisher
61 Red-bellied Woodpecker
3 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
82 Downy Woodpecker
20 Hairy Woodpecker
15 Northern Flicker
125 Blue Jay
366 American Crow
37 Horned Lark
280 Black-capped Chickadee
32 Tufted Titmouse
2 Red-breasted Nuthatch
97 White-breasted Nuthatch
53 Brown Creeper
3 Carolina Wren
1 Winter Wren
6 Golden-crowned Kinglet
14 Eastern Bluebird
33 American Robin
1207 European Starling
117 Cedar Waxwing
136 American Tree Sparrow
1 Fox Sparrow
19 Song Sparrow
20 White-throated Sparrow
6 White-crowned Sparrow
661 Dark-eyed Junco
2 Lapland Longspur
290 Northern Cardinal
8 Purple Finch
100 House Finch
73 Pine Siskin
282 American Goldfinch
585 House Sparrow

Here are the results from the very first (of hopefully many) Rock Cut Christmas Bird Counts!

We had 19 counters and like the other two area counts, crummy weather.

The List:

• Cackling Goose – 16
• Canada Goose – 7,457
• American Black Duck – 15
• Mallard – 806
• duck sp. – 1
• Common Merganser – 2
• Wild Turkey – 49
• Great Blue Heron – 2
• Bald Eagle – 1 (adult)
• Northern Harrier – 1
• Sharp-shinned Hawk – cw [could not relocate the one I found the day before]
• Cooper’s Hawk – 5
• Red-tailed Hawk – 31
• American Kestrel – 6
• Ring-billed Gull – 39
• Herring Gull – 16
• Rock Pigeon – 65
• Mourning Dove – 106
• Belted Kingfisher – 1
• Red-bellied Woodpecker – 34
• Downy Woodpecker – 54
• Hairy Woodpecker – 12
• Northern Flicker – 7
• NORTHERN SHRIKE – 4
• Blue Jay – 44
• American Crow – 277
• Horned Lark – 2
• Black-capped Chickadee – 154
• Tufted Titmouse – 10
• Red-breasted Nuthatch – 2
• White-breasted Nuthatch – 32
• Brown Creeper – 21
• Eastern Bluebird – 1
• Hermit Thrush – 1
• American Robin – 20
• European Starling – 1,219
• Cedar Waxwing – 331
• Yellow-rumped Warbler – 3
• American Tree Sparrow – 123
• Song Sparrow – 4
• Swamp Sparrow – 1
• White-throated Sparrow – 4
• Dark-eyed Junco – 336
• Lapland Longspur – cw
• Northern Cardinal – 135
• House Finch – 47
• Pine Siskin – 26
• American Goldfinch – 140
• House Sparrow – 289

TOTAL: 11,952 birds
SPECIES: 47

The final reports have been received. The Rockford Count recorded 73 species, plus 2 count week, with a total of 18858 individual birds on count day. I am grateful to everyone who volunteered their time and gasoline to go out into the snow and count birds. I am especially impressed by the team that was out on cross-country skis for 18.5 miles and 15.5 hours!

The deep snow kept a lot of birds around feeders or in sheltered spots, so getting to those places was important. This year, we had 10 feeder watchers, a new count high, which really helped. The feeders produced a lot of birds.

Some highlights: 21 Bald Eagles (8 adults, 13 immatures of various ages), a new count high. 1 Merlin, always rare here in winter, 2 Chipping Sparrows at the Brown feeder (they have been there for around 10 days including count day and were photographed and documented by Joyce), 1 Savannah Sparrow, 2 Carolina Wrens, 7 Winter Wrens (a new count high total), 257 Downy Woodpeckers (new count high), 110 Brown Creepers (new count high), and 806 House Finches (a new count high and probably a new state high, since Rockford held the previous record with 720).

Other species of note: 1 N. Bobwhite, 16 Cooper’s Hawks (quite a few buzzing feeders), 20 Great Horned Owls, 2 Yellow-rumped Warblers, 1 Hermit Thrush, 1 Common Grackle (feeder), 1 Rusty Blackbird, 2 White-crowned Sparrows (1 at feeder), 101 Snow Buntings, 5 Lapland Longspurs, 7 Fox Sparrows (3 at one feeder), 1 Hermit Thrush, 24 E. Bluebirds, 4 Northern Shrikes, 5 Pileated Woodpeckers, 1 Red-headed Woodpecker, 3 Cackling Geese (goose numbers were way down this year, almost certainly because the deep snow forced them to move to places where the snow wasn’t so deep and the water wasn’t frozen), 9 Common Goldeneye and 21 Common Mergansers (both species in the rivers), 1 Killdeer, 4 Wilson’s Snipe, and 89 American Robins (not nearly a count high).

Some folks expressed surprise at seeing a Robin in this snow and cold, but they will stick around as long as they have food and water. The food is essentially fruits on old crabapple, buckthorn and hackberry trees.

Count week birds were 3 Trumpeter Swans seen by Martin Kehoe and an Eastern Towhee, also at the feeder of Bill and Joyce Brown, which was seen on Friday the 19th but not on Saturday the 20th.

Happy New Year!

The day isn’t over yet, but I can safely say that this has been some of the worst weather for finding birds that I’ve ever seen on a CBC. Many, many thanks to all of you who went out and counted. If the rain slacks off Dan and I will probably get out again late in the day, but the steady rain and dense fog make for tough bird-finding. Of note was a Peregrine Falcon perched in a large oak between the park drive and the bank of the Rock River in Blackhawk Park. It may sit there until the weather improves if anyone wants to go look.

Barbara