I've been a busy little beaver this winter with classes, free and accepted Masonry, constant sickness, and my little bundle of joy, Landon. I'm happy to say that this past winter is over. February is typically my slowest birding month of the year, but this year was extra slow with only 2 incidental reports from my yard and one from work. What an awful month to have to live through in Massachusetts.
Looking at the number of times I've birded in the month of February over the last three years shows a steady decline in my birding effort since 2009. The year 2008 was fairly low also; mostly local birding with one trip to the coast. You can see that I was way more excited about February birding in 2009; five trips to the coast that year. The number of checklists includes casual/incidental sightings. So, I included the number of species reported. February sucks.
Year
|
February Checklists
|
# Species Reported
|
2011
|
2
|
3
|
2010
|
7
|
18
|
2009
|
15
|
74
|
2008
|
7
|
47
|
Let's just put February behind us. March was much better. I got out more during lunch and on the weekends. However, March also shows somewhat of a 3-year decline in my winter birding effort. I do need to mention that weather plays a major role in the number of species seen during spring migration. Bolton flats was perfect in '09 and '10, but this year was terrible for waterfowl stop-overs.
Year
|
March Checklists
|
# Species Reported
|
2011
|
16
|
46
|
2010
|
21
|
55
|
2009
|
29
|
91
|
2008
|
7
|
65
|
One of my favorite trips in March was to High Ridge Wildlife Management area in Princeton. The first signs of spring were in the air.
I had a flock of 11 FOX SPARROWS
And this PILEATED WOODPECKER
COMMON YELLOWTHROAT
PALM WARBLER
More posting to follow!
Kevin
Don't know much about birds, but you've got some fantastic photo's here. "white sucker" - is that really the name of the Fish?
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