Backyard Big Year

I’m going absolutely crazy!  What’s a guy gotta do to get some new birds around here?  We had freezing rain in the morning, so it was nasty outside all day.  But I spent 2 hours outside–or at least in the garage door out of the rain–and only managed 21 species.  Ugh!  The only good news was that there were Canada Goose flocks moving around this morning, after being pretty hard to come by the last week.  Unfortunately I couldn’t pull any Cackling Goose or better rare geese out of the moving flocks.  Oh well, tomorrow is another day.  Slow and steady wins the race.  Insert other hopeful platitude here.

eBird checklist

Another very cold day, starting out at 7ºF and ending up in the 20s.  Once again, no new birds for the count, but I was able to photograph and Canada Goose flock and audio record some House Sparrows for the photo and audio big year.  Thank goodness for the photo and audio goals of my backyard big year, or I would be going crazy trying to see a new bird right now!

I was outside from 7:15-8:50am and 10am-11am, with additional time at windows and listening to the OldBird 21c microphone in the morning.  In the afternoon I went to my son’s basketball game at the school just down the road and there was a Brown-headed Cowbird in a flock of House Sparrows.  But no sign of cowbirds at my house so far this year.  Ugh!

Here’s the eBird checklist from this morning.

Another cold day, but not as cold as yesterday–started out at 9ºF and got up into the low 20s.  Once again, no new birds for the year–but I did get photos of Eastern Bluebird and Snow Goose.  In reviewing my recording from last night, I found that I got a recording of an Eastern Screech-Owl at 1:09am.  I birded all morning, then spent the afternoon processing audio recordings–check out the list of birds with audio recordings from the yard.  I will add more tomorrow.

A few more birds showed up while I watched mostly from inside this afternoon, so I ended up with 28 species for the day.

AM eBird checklist
PM eBird checklist

Very cold, starting out at only 2ºF after evening snows.  I was outside for just under two hours off and on throughout the morning, the rest of the time I was listening to the OldBird21c microphone and watching from the windows while working.  Lots of activity in the yard, though no new birds for the year list.  Was able to get photos of House Sparrow and Ring-billed Gull for the photo big year list.  Best bird was probably a first year Lesser Black-backed Gull that came through overhead with Ring-billed Gulls and a couple of Herring Gulls.

26 birds for the day, eBird checklist