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Bird watchers agape at steadfast robins
For the Observer-Reporter
newsroom@observer-reporter.com
What ever happened to flying south for the winter?
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There were startling numbers of starlings wheeling overhead in noisy flocks. But it was the sheer number of robins - thousands of them - that suddenly appeared this fall and stayed well into winter that had everybody talking.
When county bird watchers went out Dec. 15 and again on Dec. 29 to do Audubon's CBC census gathering in partnership with Cornell Lab of Ornithology, they discovered what a difference a year makes.
Last year, a mere 13 robins were sighted in both counts. This year, a whopping 7,032 are making it into the record books.
"I was amazed by the number of robins," veteran bird watcher Marjorie Howard said. "There were at least 100 in our yard."
Greene County has two 15-mile diameter bird count areas, one that includes Ryerson Station State Park and one encompassing Clarksville. They cover the range of habitat that the county offers its wild bird populations, from hilly woodlands to rolling river valleys. The different habitat seems to be reflected in the robin count.
While there were 611 spotted in the Clarksville Circle, Howard had good reason to be amazed when she and others in the Ryerson Circle counted 5,421 red-breasted truants from normal migration patterns in the hills of western Greene County.
Ornithologist Ralph Bell of Jefferson thinks he knows the answer. He has been keeping meticulous records of the comings and goings of all things avian since 1927, and his real-time research is backed by what he reads as a member of the Audubon Society.
"It's the mild weather and all those fox grapes. Poison ivy berries, too. Birds don't leave when there's something to eat," he said. "Last year, there wasn't nearly as much food for them, so they moved south and a whole lot of them ended up in Florida."
Howard agrees that the superabundance of wild grapes that filled the arboreal canopies of every wooded hill and valley was a boon to birds this winter. "There weren't many birds at the feeders, and everybody noticed there were hardly any cardinals. Birds usually come to the feeders when they can't find food in the wild, so they must have been finding plenty to eat," Howard concluded.
Audubon data confirms that sudden population fluxuations are indeed influenced by global weather patterns as well as food availability. Last year's massive ice storms blowing in from the west seem to have caused eastern robins that normally winter in Texas to veer to Florida. Whatever the reason for their arrival, robins filled the sky with flocks so huge that birdwatchers had to pick a tangent spot and estimate the number of birds that were passing by.
Intriguing anomalies aside, there are plenty of factors that can affect the numbers on any given count day. "When the sun is shining you can see the birds - it brings them up. When there's no snow cover they can be hard to pick out," Howard said.
There were no vultures spotted on either day, but some were seen within a three-day spread around the designated count days, so the count week notation lets Audubon know they are in the area.
Birdwatchers across the continent had from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5 to stage their thousands of 24-hour counts. Compilers have until mid-February to complete their data, and the public is invited to log on to the Audubon Web site to watch the results come in.
This longest running scientific bird census started in 1900, when ornithologist Frank Chapman turned a Southern tradition of going bird hunting on Christmas day into a matter for notebooks rather than shotgun shells.
Now, as winter settles in and the grapes have been gobbled, cardinals are brightening countless feeders, just in time for the 11th Great Backyard Bird Count Feb 15-18.
For this count, which is wildly popular with kids, plan on being outside or at the window watching the bird feeder for at least 15 minutes a day. Count birds at as many places and on as many days as you like - just keep a separate list for each day and/or location that you observe.
In 2007, the Great Backyard Bird Count broke records for the number of birds reported and the number of checklists filed. Bird watchers counted a total of 11,082,837 birds of 613 species and submitted a total of 81,203 checklists.
For Christmas Bird Count results visit http://cbc.audubon.org. To participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, visit www.birdsource.org/gbbc.
