Recent Sightings
(From the Alachua County birders' hotline. The most recent posts are at the top. Scroll down for older ones. Only the last month's are shown.)
-------- Original Message --------Subject: Bye bye birdies!
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 12:17:18 -0500
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
Wild plums and azaleas are blooming, all manner of birds are singing. There's a lot going on:
It feels like they just arrived a few weeks ago, but the Sandhill Cranes are already departing for their northern nesting grounds. I think Pat Burns was the first to notice it, on the 19th, but in the past few days it seems to have accelerated, as I've been getting daily reports from a variety of people and places.
On the 31st Lloyd Davis went to last winter's Rusty Blackbirde rooste at Magnolia Parke and found 30 Rusties. Mike Manetz and Adam Zions found the same number there on the 3rd. Morning is best: Lloyd was there at 7:45, Mike and Adam at 8:00. Magnolia Parke is here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203358630947857947932.00049b3f7749231965324&msa=0&ll=29.691166,-82.392397&spn=0.009637,0.013797
Prospecting around Orange Lake on the 30th, Chris Burney saw 7-8 White-fronted Geese from Heagy-Burry Park "in the distance on a bar where the creek meets the lake."
Ted and Steven Goodman found two Henslow's Sparrows in the big field at Gum Root Park on the 29th, then went over to the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail and spotted the Fox Sparrow that's been there since December 4th.
Walking south from Windsor on the 28th, Phil Laipis found the Wilson's Warbler first spotted by Steve Collins on December 17th.
On the 23rd Barbara Shea was at home, recuperating from the flu, when she saw a male Black-throated Blue Warbler at her bird bath, "unmistakable even to my fogged brain at the time. He was all there, the dark face and dark curved bill, dark blue back, wings with black in front of the wings contrasting with the very lite belly and last but not least his little 'pocket square' was right there too." There have been seven previous winter sightings in Alachua County, five in December (which may have been late fall migrants), one in January, and one in February.
There's been an inexplicable (by me, anyway) influx of Painted Buntings in the area. Usually they migrate with Indigo Buntings, but I haven't heard any reports of Indigos. Four Painteds, however, since the 20th. Watch your feeders!
Mike Manetz commemorated the discovery of the Common Goldeneye at Chapmans Pond with a limerick:
On Chapman's a Goldeneye glided,
and made the old birders excited.
Their age it was showin'
when asked by Rex Rowan,
They couldn't recall who first spied it.
Since its discovery on the 26th, the drake has been joined by a hen.
Greg Stephens has posted a remarkable sequence of photos of a Red-shouldered Hawk doing a very creditable imitation of an Osprey: http://www.photographybygregstephens.com/p1041200541/h2c4bf85e#h38279fae
Here's a gorgeous photo. No local connection at all, it's just a gorgeous photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionmonger/5991770653/in/faves-27381338@N03/ These guys are increasing in numbers now, and should be common through April or even May.
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Common Goldeneye at Chapmans Pond
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:24:55 -0500
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
Tickets are still available for Saturday's Wildlife-Friendly Yards Tour. This is a self-guided tour of six local yards that are specifically planted and organized for the benefit of wildlife, and they should give you all the inspiration and good examples you need to attract birds to your own place. Tickets are $10 per person and will be available at Wild Birds Unlimited, 4215 NW 16th Boulevard, until noon on Saturday. You'll receive addresses and maps to all six yards when you buy your ticket. Experienced - and devilishly attractive - birders will be at each location to point out especially interesting birds (okay, that might be a half truth, but I won't say which half).
A Common Goldeneye was spotted at Chapmans Pond this morning. Most of the goldeneyes we see in Alachua County are hens, which are relatively drab, but this one is a drake, with a brilliant green head and immaculate white sides. It's worth seeing. Also present in the open water are a Lesser Scaup and three Hooded Mergansers, with several Blue-winged and Green-winged Teal in the shallows at the west end of the pond.
One thing I should have mentioned in my note about the Brown Creeper: it's been easiest to see in the early afternoon. Mike Manetz and I went there at about 1:00 on the 23rd and had no trouble finding it.
Mike is organizing a Birds and Conservation Tour of Costa Rica. Join him from June 20-28 for exciting tropical birding and a look at some remarkable efforts to protect the biodiversity our birds depend on. This trip is a fundraiser for Alachua Audubon. Details are at the web site here (and you should check it out, if only to see the the great picture of Mike relaxing in a hammock at the end of a hard day's birdwatching): http://birdsandconservation.weebly.com/
But that's in June. The Wildlife-Friendly Yards Tour is Saturday, so remember to buy your ticket!
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: First Purple Martin!
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:33:53 -0500
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
A Brown Creeper is being seen regularly in a residential area near Chapmans Pond. From Tower Road turn east on SW 41st Place as if going to Chapmans, go about a third of a mile, and turn right onto SW 69th Terrace (a sign by the entrance says "Green Leaf"). Continue to SW 44th Avenue, then turn right and park on the street. The creeper is part of a feeding flock that hangs around the intersection of SW 70th Terrace and SW 44th Avenue. It seems to prefer pines to deciduous trees.
John Killian relocated the Green-tailed Towhee on the 23rd, "doing his thing in the same place." And Andy Kratter reports that his Fox Sparrow was still there behind Pine Grove Cemetery on the 20th, though it seems a mite more shy these days (it stuck around till early March last year).
Fred Bassett banded three hummingbirds in the rain on the 18th - a female Rufous at Greg Hart's in Alachua, a female Rufous at Paul Duey's in NW Gainesville, and a female Rufous at another site in Gainesville - and then on the 20th he got a fourth Rufous in Archer. I think he may come back one more time this winter, so let me know if a hummer shows up at your place and you want it banded. I'd guess that after Fred's presentation on Sunday there will be many more hummingbird feeders around Gainesville. I know I pulled mine out of the utility room and set it up by the kitchen window.
So much for winter birds. The first spring bird, the season's first Purple Martin, showed up at Bob Knight and Debbie Segal's place near the Hague Dairy on the 23rd. The next day, the Alachua Audubon Society put up a martin house on the former site of George's Hardware, with the permission of the property owners.
I walked around Morningside Nature Center on the 17th and was surprised to find a lot of House Finches in the pines around the driveway and parking lot. I don't remember seeing them there before. A couple of them were in song, as were a handful of Pine Warblers, Tufted Titmice, Northern Cardinals, and at least one Eastern Towhee and Carolina Chickadee.
Other signs of spring: Cattle Egrets are largely migratory in this part of Florida, most arriving in March and leaving around September. I saw one, in breeding plumage no less, foraging around the Royal Park shopping center on Newberry Road on the 17th. I've heard a few Northern Mockingbirds singing, two or three weeks earlier than usual. Redbuds are in bloom in my neighborhood. And on the 18th the rain left yellow pine pollen in the gutters.
One of my chief failings as a birder has nothing to do with skill or knowledge. I just don't like waking up in the dark. So I follow the changes in sunrise and sunset times with interest. Since the winter solstice, sunset has (of course) been getting later. But sunrise has been getting later too - at least until the 15th, when it started getting earlier again, dropping back from 7:26 to 7:25. As of today, we've gained 23 minutes of daylight since the solstice. Sunrise is still a few minutes later than it was a month ago (7:23 today versus 7:20 on the solstice), but sunset is nearly half an hour later (6:00 today versus 5:34 on the solstice).
Animal Services is requesting public input on feral cats. They're calling it something else, but it's about feral cats. The ultimate aim of feral cat advocates is to get some kind of official status for cat colonies so that if, for instance, someone has a cat colony on the edge of Paynes Prairie, they can argue, "Well it's authorized by the county government!" This has already happened in California where feral cats were destroying endangered Least Tern colonies, and it is not a good thing. So if you've got a few minutes, please fill out their survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlachuaCountyAnimalServices
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Brown Pelican, Brown Creeper. Do I detect a theme?
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:36
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
Hummingbird bander Fred Bassett will be here on Wednesday the 18th. If you've got a hummer that's regularly visiting a feeder, and you'd like Fred to identify and band it, let me know as soon as you can and I'll pass your contact information along to him. He's got Deb Werner and Paul Duey on his schedule already.
Bob Knight spotted a Brown Pelican from Palm Point on the 7th. It was seen again on the 12th by Anne Casella.
Laura Berdinger recently moved to Gainesville and settled into an apartment in the southwest part of town. On Friday morning she looked out her window and saw a Brown Creeper: "Brown and white with a clearly curved bill and sort of small head (compared to the body). I saw the creeper very clearly from a variety of sides as it spiraled up the tree, flew down, climbed back up." Well, Laura, that's just our little way of saying welcome to Gainesville.
Not only did Charlene Leonard relocate the Fox Sparrow at the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail on the 7th, she saw six Pine Siskins while walking north from Boulware Springs, "feeding in the pine trees between Sweetwater Preserve and Pine Grove Cemetery." These are the first siskins reported in the county this winter, but it's not unusual for siskins to make their first appeareance after January 1st.
The Wilson's Warbler is still in the bulrushes south of Windsor. John Martin saw it on Saturday.
Purple Martins were reported in Brevard County on the 11th and 12th, so on Friday morning I went by George's Hardware to see if any had shown up at the martin houses - and not only were the martin houses gone, George's Hardware was gone too! It closed its doors for the last time on December 28th. I should probably subscribe to the newspaper.
Presently the State of Florida owns submerged lands and all the surrounding property to a point defined as "ordinary high water." Florida State Representative Tom Goodson has introduced a bill (HB 1103) that will redefine "ordinary high water" at a lower elevation, moving the boundary between public and private land further out into the water. This is a very harmful bill and it needs to be defeated. Garry Appelson comments: "Combined with ongoing efforts to privatize our water so it can be bought and sold, the effort to sell off 'surplus' state lands, and the ongoing effort to develop the parks, the future of Florida’s wetland resources gets bleaker each year. This legislation was written by the development community with no input from the Floridians it will impact. The voices from the environmental community need to be louder." Here's more information and a quick, simple way to register your objections:
https://secure3.convio.net/nasaud/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1193&JServSessionIdr004=l1mnsgjam4.app341a
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---------- Original Message ----------
Subject: Brrrrrrrr!-ding report
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 at 9:34 PM
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
I thought this was supposed to be a mild winter. Oh well, it will be over soon: the first Purple Martin of the spring will show up in the next two or three weeks, and by this time next month the first Ospreys will have returned and started working on their nests - dusting off the snow, removing the icicles...
Bob Carroll and I started the New Year right, by looking for the Green-tailed Towhee. Both of us had adopted a New Year's resolution to Not Jump Any Fences, Okay Not Until At Least An Hour Has Passed, Okay Maybe Half An Hour, and our ethical conduct paid off, as we got three good looks at the bird, two of them as it scratched for seeds atop the concrete wildlife barrier.
Visiting Tennessee birder David Kirschke, John Killian, and I walked south from Windsor on the 2nd and relocated the Wilson's Warbler in the same shrub where it's been since the 17th. As we were leaving, we ran into John Martin, who walked farther south than we did and found Canvasbacks, Redheads, Lesser Scaup, and Northern Pintails. He also saw a high-flying westbound flock of American White Pelicans which he estimated at 275 birds.
David Kirschke has been tracking down all of the local rarities over the last few days: he saw a Golden-crowned Kinglet at San Felasco Park, he relocated the Ash-throated Flycatcher out on the Sweetwater Dike, and he and Mike Manetz saw one Winter Wren and heard another in the dry bed of Prairie Creek.
Mike and I visited Newnans Lake on the afternoon of the 4th, spending an hour each at Powers Park and Palm Point. Mike estimated over a hundred Bonaparte's Gulls, and there were several hundred Ring-billeds and a few Herrings. Ducks included a couple of dozen Redheads, and a dozen or so Red-breasted Mergansers and Ruddy Ducks. We found two Horned Grebes out in the middle of the lake as well. There's more and more exposed mud east of the fishing pier at Powers, but Mike and I saw nothing on it but 23 Killdeer and a Greater Yellowlegs.
There are a few more Prairie Warblers around than usual: I saw one in my back yard on the 2nd, Bob Carroll and I had one at the US-441 observation platform on the 1st, and Matt Hafner saw one at Lake Alice on the 31st.
A couple of expert young birders posted their birding adventures from their first day in Gainesville - with beautiful photos - here: http://www.nemesisbird.com/2012/01/birding-around-gainesville-day-1/
If you're casting around for a good New Year's resolution, here's one: start using eBird. Current and prospective eBird users - all birders, in fact - could benefit from this piece on the Wisconsin eBird site: http://ebird.org/content/wi/news/theimportanceofcomments
Last year's lists:
The top Alachua County year lister was Mike Manetz, with 231 species. This is the second-highest county year list of all time, second only to Mike's own record of 241 during 2000, the year Newnans Lake dried up.
Dotty Robbins had a great Florida year, with 306, and an excellent ABA-area year, with 410 (ABA area is North America north of Mexico).
My Alachua County year list was 221, my third-best ever. My Florida year list was 246, the extra 25 species due mainly to the Cedar Key field trips I led. My ABA-area year list is usually the same as my Florida year list, because I never leave the state, but this year it was 251, five more than my Florida year list, thanks to my trip to Kansas.
I loved Mary Landsman's take on listing and listers: "My numbers are not so great but I will share and others can enjoy having more than me." Mary's Alachua County year list was 152, and her Florida year list was 211.
Scott Flamand is the only person I know who goes "mammaling" and keeps a Mammal Life List. Not only does he keep a Mammal Life List, he keeps a Mammal Year List, and here's the 2011 edition. You can tell that Scott spends his summers out West:
1. Northern Deer Mouse
2. House Mouse
3. Long-tailed Vole
4. Townsend’s Chipmunk
5. Uinta Chipmunk
6. Eastern Chipmunk
7. Yellow Pine Chipmunk
8. Shadow Chipmunk (Allen’s)
9. Long-eared Chipmunk
10. Yellow-cheeked Chipmunk
11. Least Chipmunk
12. Lodgepole Chipmunk
13. Cliff Chipmunk
14. Colorado Chipmunk
15. Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel
16. Wyoming Ground Squirrel
17. Rock Squirrel
18. California Ground Squirrel
19. Belding’s Ground Squirrel
20. White-tailed Antelope Squirrel
21. Eastern Gray Squirrel
22. Western Gray Squirrel
23. Southern Flying Squirrel
24. Eastern Fox Squirrel
25. Albert’s Squirrel
26. Red Squirrel
27. Douglas’s Squirrel (Chickaree)
28. White-tailed Prairie Dog
29. Black-tailed Prairie Dog
30. Gunnison’s Prairie Dog
31. Yellow-bellied Marmot
32. Porcupine
33. Woodchuck
34. Black-tailed Jackrabbit
35. American Pika
36. Mountain Cottontail
37. Desert Cottontail
38. Eastern Cottontail
39. European Rabbit
40. Marsh Rabbit
41. White-tailed Deer
42. Bighorn Sheep
43. Elk
44. Moose
45. Bison
46. Mule Deer
47. Pronghorn
48. Wild Hog
49. Coyote
50. Northern Raccoon
51. Muskrat
52. Striped Skunk
53. Gray Fox
54. Red Fox
55. Bobcat
56. Virginia Opossum
57. Nine-banded Armadillo
58. Eastern Mole
59. Southeastern Myotis
60. Mexican Free-tailed Bat
61. Bottlenose Dolphin
62. Gray Whale
63. West Indian Manatee
I'm leaving in a few days for Kansas, to welcome my son home from Afghanistan, so if you send me an email you won't get a response until I return toward the end of next week. Get out there and find a rare bird to make me jealous when I get back.
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---------- Original Message ----------
Subject: Last birds of 2011
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2011 at 3:02 PM
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
John Killian and I walked south from the Windsor boat ramp on the 29th and had a pretty good day. We saw a dozen species of ducks, the most notable of which were three Canvasbacks, a dozen or more Redheads, six Lesser Scaups, four Mallards, three Northern Pintails, and a Northern Shoveler. Surprises included a Golden-crowned Kinglet, a Rusty Blackbird, and a male Wilson's Warbler. Well, strictly speaking the warbler wasn't a surprise - it's been present since at least the 17th, when Steve Collins pointed it out to Greg McDermott and me the day before the Christmas Bird Count. John got a nice picture of it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/6597762701/in/photostream
I spent a few hours birding with Matt Hafner and Adam and Gina Kent at Newnans Lake this morning. There was a lot to see. Powers Park was especially busy; Adam recorded 60 species in an hour and a half. Most notable were a small flock of Red-breasted Mergansers and an American Bittern, but the Bonaparte's Gulls flying close to the fishing pier were especially entertaining to me. Hundreds of cormorants and gulls were off Palm Point, and we scoped out several other interesting things, including 121 Ruddy Ducks and 3 Horned Grebes. It's worth remarking that the increasing expanses of mud east of Powers Park are starting to remind me of 2000, when the drought brought in 30 species of shorebirds.
Steven and Ted Goodman found a Limpkin at Lake Alice on the 28th, the first time in years that anyone has seen a Limpkin there. It was "on the island near the wooden bridge next to that drain-like thing."
Spring seems unusually advanced this year. I've already heard Northern Cardinals, Tufted Titmice, and Pine Warblers, even a Northern Mockingbird, singing. And many flowers that normally wait till late January or February to bloom are already in flower: Yellow Jessamine, Lyreleaf Sage, Black Medick, Carolina Cranesbill, Henbit Deadnettle, White Clover, and Red Maple.
Local birder Sidney Wade's poem "Burrowing Owl" was published in The New Yorker's print edition in October but was not accessible online. Here's one of her other locally-inspired poems: http://www.versedaily.org/2011/prairie.shtml
Miami birder Trey Mitchell is proposing a contest for 2012 that he calls Bird of the Day: http://www.birdaday.net/
A reminder: Alachua Audubon has a nice web site with lots of informative pages. Want to know which mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and fish have been recorded in Alachua County? Click over to "Local Natural History." Want to read a history of birding in Alachua County or see photos of some of our most notorious birders? Click over to "Local Birding." You can find some interesting stuff just by clicking on the sidebar.
Did any of you keep year lists in 2011? County year lists, state year lists, ABA-area year lists? If you'd like to share them, send them over. I know that Steve Collins was very close to 500 birds in the ABA area this year, and I know that I was not. What were you? Let me know, and I'll post it.
To steal Greg Stephens's joke: After many months of thought, I have decided to take the rest of the year off. See you in 2012. I hope you all have an Embarrassingly Happy New Year.
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---------- Original Message ----------
Subject: The towhee abideth still
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:47:45 -0500
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
If anyone needs a Green-tailed Towhee for a Christmas present, it was seen twice on Saturday. Dotty Robbins, a visiting Tennessee birder named David Kirschke, and I waited for it from 7:00 to 11:00, but never saw it. Bob Simons showed up at noon and found it right away, "nearly straight across from the parking area for the board walk - perhaps 100 feet north of that. It was under the dead dog fennel at the base of the concrete wall." I notified Dotty and David of Bob's success, and David went back at 3:00 and saw the bird.
There's a Fox Sparrow in the same area, first noted on the 17th and seen again today. It's in the same general area where John Killian first found the towhee, near the large spreading green elderberry plant on the far side of the ditch.
Andy Kratter's Fox Sparrow on the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail is a little more cooperative, periodically visiting a feeder that Andy has set out along the trail behind Pine Grove Cemetery. There's parking in the back of the cemetery, south of SE 22nd Avenue. A map is here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203358630947857947932.00049b8c9c9d8b31076d4&msa=0
Merry Christmas!
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Christmas Bird Count results
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:00:40 -0500
From: Rex Rowan < rexrowan@gmail.com >
To: Alachua County birding report
It was a heroic performance by the participants in the Gainesville Christmas Bird Count this year, above and beyond the call of duty, because even without any water on Paynes Prairie - or anywhere else but Newnans Lake - they managed to find 157 species of birds, one of our best counts ever.
The stars of the show were two species new to the Gainesville Count. The first was the Green-tailed Towhee initially discovered by John Killian on December 4th. Its appearances since then had been extremely sporadic, but on the morning of the Count, John was able to relocate and photograph it in a matter of minutes by the simple expedient of climbing the fence (Christmas Counts are a dirty business, and require dirty tactics). Here's a nice photo of the towhee that John took a few days before the Count: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/6546896545/in/photostream
The second new species was discovered by the Kanapaha Prairie team late in the morning. First-time Christmas Counter David Tufts pointed out a sparrow-like bird in the short grass beside a dirt road. I was momentarily puzzled by the streaky back and white eye-ring in combination with a narrow, pointed bill, and then everything fell into place: Sprague's Pipit! John Hintermister had told me that he'd seen one in a dry field near Lake Alice when he was 15, and I'd been skeptical that this western species, almost invariably coastal on the rare occasions when it occurs in Florida, would turn up in Gainesville. Yet here it was. And Steven Goodman pointed out a second one a moment later! We floated through the rest of the day. The next morning a few of us wangled permission from The Conservation Fund to make another visit to the Prairie, and Steve Collins got this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/6546896531/in/photostream
Several other notable birds were reported as well, including Snow Goose, Canvasback, Redhead, Greater Scaup, Red-breasted Merganser, Limpkin, Solitary Sandpiper, Laughing Gull, 3 unidentified hummingbirds (one a possible Allen's), Least Flycatcher, Ash-throated Flycatcher, Winter Wren, Tennessee Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Henslow's Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Summer Tanager, and Rusty Blackbird. Here's the complete list:
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck 23
Snow Goose 3
Muscovy Duck 82
Wood Duck 298
Gadwall 4
American Wigeon 3
Mallard 4
Mallard (Feral) 6
Mottled Duck 66
Blue-winged Teal 155
Northern Shoveler 1
Northern Pintail 5
Green-winged Teal 437
Canvasback 10
Redhead 9
Ring-necked Duck 119
Greater Scaup 7
Lesser Scaup 23
Bufflehead 2
Hooded Merganser 77
Red-breasted Merganser 1
Ruddy Duck 63
Northern Bobwhite 33
Wild Turkey 74
Common Loon 1
Pied-billed Grebe 91
Horned Grebe 4
Wood Stork 77
Double-crested Cormorant 1943
Anhinga 59
American White Pelican 150
American Bittern 2
Great Blue Heron 198
Great Egret 210
Snowy Egret 47
Little Blue Heron 170
Tricolored Heron 33
Cattle Egret 47
Green Heron 5
Black-crowned Night-Heron 55
White Ibis 978
Glossy Ibis 38
Black Vulture 405
Turkey Vulture 1915
Osprey 4
Bald Eagle 67
Northern Harrier 54
Sharp-shinned Hawk 11
Cooper's Hawk 25
Accipiter, sp. 1
Red-shouldered Hawk 117
Red-tailed Hawk 80
American Kestrel 39
Merlin 1
Virginia Rail 8
Sora 21
Common Gallinule 93
American Coot 3084
Limpkin 2
Sandhill Crane 3332
Killdeer 510
Solitary Sandpiper 2
Greater Yellowlegs 28
Lesser Yellowlegs 6
Least Sandpiper 7
Wilson's Snipe 158
American Woodcock 15
Bonaparte's Gull 30
Laughing Gull 6
Ring-billed Gull 629
Herring Gull 6
Forster's Tern 41
Rock Pigeon 47
Eurasian Collared-Dove 4
White-winged Dove 1
Mourning Dove 629
Common Ground-Dove 4
Barn Owl 7
Eastern Screech-Owl 19
Great Horned Owl 44
Barred Owl 40
Whip-poor-will 4
Selasphorus, sp. 3
hummingbird, sp. 1
Belted Kingfisher 29
Red-headed Woodpecker 32
Red-bellied Woodpecker 263
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 92
Downy Woodpecker 140
Northern Flicker 52
Pileated Woodpecker 121
Least Flycatcher 1
Eastern Phoebe 338
Ash-throated Flycatcher 2
Loggerhead Shrike 39
White-eyed Vireo 63
Blue-headed Vireo 64
Blue Jay 182
American Crow 611
Fish Crow 179
crow, sp. 176
Tree Swallow 17
Carolina Chickadee 331
Tufted Titmouse 343
Brown-headed Nuthatch 18
Carolina Wren 329
House Wren 123
Winter Wren 2
Sedge Wren 12
Marsh Wren 14
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 132
Golden-crowned Kinglet 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 571
Eastern Bluebird 230
Hermit Thrush 53
American Robin 5697
Gray Catbird 141
Northern Mockingbird 167
Brown Thrasher 14
European Starling 60
American Pipit 8
Sprague's Pipit 2
Cedar Waxwing 55
Ovenbird 6
Northern Waterthrush 4
Black-and-white Warbler 87
Tennessee Warbler 1
Orange-crowned Warbler 86
Common Yellowthroat 128
Northern Parula 2
Palm Warbler 443
Pine Warbler 124
Yellow-rumped Warbler 4166
Yellow-throated Warbler 31
Prairie Warbler 2
Wilson's Warbler 1
Green-tailed Towhee 1
Eastern Towhee 111
Chipping Sparrow 562
Field Sparrow 22
Vesper Sparrow 43
Savannah Sparrow 387
Grasshopper Sparrow 5
Henslow's Sparrow 1
Fox Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 103
Swamp Sparrow 446
White-throated Sparrow 123
White-crowned Sparrow 56
Summer Tanager 1
Northern Cardinal 688
Red-winged Blackbird 3003
Eastern Meadowlark 241
Rusty Blackbird 11
Common Grackle 1188
Boat-tailed Grackle 1144
Brown-headed Cowbird 74
Baltimore Oriole 16
House Finch 121
American Goldfinch 420
House Sparrow 23
This will be the final birding report of the fall, since winter begins in about an hour and a half. I wish you all a festive holiday, and remind you that your New Year's resolutions will not be complete unless they include the determination to, "Go birding more often." Go ahead and write it down now, so you won't forget. It's a simple way to make your 2012 happier.