2 January 1999 -- Count Summary
(Count History: January
1978 - January 1999)
Species reported Count Day: 116 (+ 2 exotics) (+ 2 additional during count Week)
Total individual birds reported Count Day: 21,423
Participants: 75 (50 in the field +25 at feeders/YARD)2 January 1999. Do numbers of participants affect the results of a CBC? I certainly believe they do. And so does the weather. The 22nd annual Buffalo Bayou CBC was afflicted by cold, damp, and extremely windy weather early in the day -- conditions that kept the birds down and some observers indoors. With our lowest number of participants in the field in several years, we did not quite reach -- the 120 species mark (a level we reached two years ago and blitzed last year with a count high of 127 species, with 64 and 68 observers in the field, respectively).
OK, I'm finally resigning myself to Ringed Turtle-Dove's not being countable (and when entering CBC data via the World Wide Web, the computer decides what is legit, so I have no choice!). But are those doves we observed in the past all Turtle-Doves? The neighborhood where I live, not far from the count circle, has a bunch of Eurasian Collared Doves -- could we have been seeing these in past years and calling them Turtle-Doves? (I, for one, had not even considered the possibility of Collared Doves until early 1998.)
Feeder Watchers Bill and Jean Harwell saw 2 Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, unusual inside the city limits in winter. Jim Morgan's feeders had a Broad-tailed Hummingbird (plus a Black-chinned two days before the count).
A total of 5 Osprey were observed, 3 along Braes Bayou near Gessner. And (believe it or not), Long-billed Dowitcher was a new species for the count: dowitchers had been seen only 3 times in previous counts, and never identified to species. Marcia and Ron Braun say a Red-shafted Flicker along the Eldridge corridor, as well as a Red-headed Woodpecker. John LaGroue's team turned up a flock of 8 Dark-eyed Juncos, and only 2 were the Slate-colored form: the 3 Oregon, 2 Pink-sided, and 1 White-winged represented forms new to the count. And, for the most unexpected species of the count: David Veselka's party found a very much out-of-season Yellow-throated Vireo at Memorial Oaks Cemetery.
Many thanks to the Area Leaders and all the participants.
--Bob Honig, Compiler
(Buffalo Bayou Christmas Bird Count web pages are hosted by the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center)