After last year’s Kishwaukee CBC almost anything would have seemed like a wonderful birding day. But, really, this year’s count was pretty slow. We had some slippery roads in the morning and some tough walking with the layer of frozen crust and ice under the fresh snow. The substantial accumulation of snow on the ground and the steady snowfall all morning meant that the birds were keeping a low profile. There was not much open water so the number of waterbirds was down.
We found a total of 59 species and 13,090 individual birds. Both numbers are low. The average number of species for the last ten years is 63. The average number of individual birds for the last ten years is 24,108.
We spent fewer than the usual number of hours in the field partly due to the fact that we had a smaller number of participants than normal. We only had 24 counters participating in the field, plus 6 feeder watchers. Just 2 parties went out early or late to look for owls.

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