Plan Your Weekend: The Garden’s Annual Bird Count
Posted in Learning Experiences, Programs and Events, Wildlife on December 12 2008, by Plant Talk
Here’s What You May See on the Tally
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Debbie Becker leads a free bird walk at the Garden every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., beginning at the Reflecting Pool in the Leon Levy Visitor Center. Join her tomorrow, December 13, for the 2008 New York Botanical Garden Bird Count. |
Every year at this time, birders flock to the parks and woods across the country and beyond for National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count. From dawn’s early light until dusk birders count all the birds they can find using a specific method and within precise geographic areas. At the end of the day the counts are tallied and compared to numbers from previous years. The information is used to determine if a bird species is in trouble or declining. Past revelations included lower than usual numbers of house finches, most likely due to conjunctivitis, and decimated crow numbers, presumably due to West Nile Virus. Occasionally, a rarity will pop up on the count as birders scour the shorelines, forests, and meadows looking for elusive visitors to their areas. Past special sightings at the Botanical Garden, which is part of Audubon’s 84-year-old Bronx-Westchester count, include common redpolls, chipping sparrows, pine warblers, Baltimore orioles, and a merlin.
Twenty years ago I started the Garden’s own unofficial bird count, a low-keyed version that is fun and educational. Instead of gathering at 5 a.m., we meet at 11 a.m. and set out to count the birds at NYBG. I keep a list of the most common New York City birds and put strokes near their names as we spot them flying by. The two decades of data from our informal count confirms the trends found in the Audubon count.
Read about the birds likely to be found on the count and of a special sighting last year after the jump.
UPDATE 12/18/08: Bird walk results
Count day was sunny and cold, with temperatures in the 20s. Nineteen people participated; the count lasted three hours and turned up 24 species and 105 birds overall. Highlights of the day included a northern shoveler at Twin Lakes, both the female and male great horned owls in the Forest, and a goshawk, for the second year in a row, by the Prop Range. A flock of house finches, a brown creeper, and a house wren also were good finds. The full list is noted here.
House finch: 12; House sparrow: 3; White-throated sparrow: 5; Black-capped chickadee: 8; Dark-eyed junco: 15; House wren: 1; American crow: 1; Blue jay: 2; Northern cardinal: 2; Mourning dove: 9; American robin: 3; Red-bellied woodpecker: 1; Downy woodpecker: 1; Tufted titmouse: 3; White-breasted nuthatch: 1; Brown creeper: 1; Northern mockingbird: 3; Hermit thrush: 2; Great horned owl: 2; Red-tailed hawk: 2; Northern goshawk: 1; Northern shoveler: 1; Mallard: 23; Hooded merganser: 3; (Last week, 30 wood ducks were counted.)
