Northern Saw-Whet Owl photo by Jim Bachman; Carolina Wren photo by Mary Zugelder; Common Redpoll photo by Heather Roskelley
The 121st annual Christmas Bird Count is in the books – or more accurately, the massive data base maintained by National Audubon. Later this year, after thousands of count reports are reviewed, this season's data will be available here.
Meanwhile you can see full reports from all 120 previous counts, from all over the world. Here is a view filtered for 2019, Illinois, where you can select specific locations. Compilers of Chicago Urban, Barrington, and Evanston count circles have sent me some impressive highlights from their reports, to go with the Calumet City/Sand Ridge count that I compile.
Everybody loves owls. The numbers reported vary with the amount of effort put into owling. Only two great horned owls from Sand Ridge but more to the north: 4 Chicago Urban, 6 Barrington, 11 Evanston and 12 Urban. I'm curious to see numbers from Lisle, which includes the Palos forest preserves.
I do know that Judy Pollock found a saw-whet owl on her Palos area route, not the only one foundon the Lisle Count. A Calumet Park saw-whet was only the fifth in 55 years of Sand Ridge counts. I was delighted to find only the second ever barred owl in 55 Sand Ridge counts, at Ivanhoe Nature Preserve in Gary. Screech and short-eared owls were on the reports I've seen.
A few “warm weather” birds always show up on our winter counts. Yellow-rumped warblers are fairly consistent, with an impressive 8 found in the Barrington circle this season. A less often found Nashville warbler made an appearance in the Urban circle. Much more unusual were the pine warbler at the Chicago Botanic Garden and common yellowthroat at the Skokie Lagoons.
Count data is more useful in tracking winter resident and migrant birds than the outliers that excite birders. Winter finches were not that abundant on the reports I've seen, given the high expectations from the early winter influx of pine siskins, redpolls and even evening grosbeaks. We did find 46 common redpolls in the Calumet area (44 at Wolf Lake), and the Chicago Botanic Garden redpolls included one hoary redpoll. The big earlier flights of siskins seem to have gone farther south.
I have been intrigued by the increasing number of Carolina wrens from Sand Ridge, a record high of 12 this season. Carolina wrens are primarily southern birds. That we are on the northern edge of their range is perhaps borne out by the numbers from count circles north of Calumet: 4 each Urban and Evanston, 3 Barrington. Alan Anderson located yet another at Lincoln Marsh, in the Fermi Lab circle. There were surely others on the many Northeast Illinois counts. Harsh winters will decimate their numbers this far north; Carolina wrens almost disappeared from the Chicago area after the severe winters of the 70s and 80s. Their increasing numbers since seem to be in response to recent milder winters.
Compilers are asked to accurately report effort and weather, which vary significantly from one count to another. Counts can be on any day of a two week spread over the holiday season and so weather can be quite different even in one area over those days. Count effort is also critical. This year Evanston had 49 participants who counted 13,773 individual birds of 70 species, 37 Calumet counters found 74 species and 11,262 birds, and 27 folks in Barrington found 8,882 individuals of 66 species. Scientists need to take all those variable into account in analyzing data. Only recently have sophisticated computers been able to work with many variables and make much scientifically useful sense of count data.
Birds are out there in all seasons. Now that we find ourselves in the late arriving “real winter” we can take part in the great backyard bird count. Spring and the annual spring count will be here soon, and its not too soon to begin plans for next season's Christmas counts.
John Elliot is a CAS Board member and long-time birder.