Date: 1/13/25 9:40 am From: RoserComeau via groups.io <80comros...> Subject: [slocobirding] Brant
FYI for bird festival trip leaders and others interested in our current Brant number: This morning I did a Brant survey in coordination with the California section of the Pacific Flyway mid-winter Brant survey. Today's count of 992 was my highest mid-January count since 2010. There has been a slow increase in our mid-January numbers since the population bottomed out at 116 in 2015 during the height of the multi-year eelgrass crash. (Eelgrass has made a dramatic comeback the past few years. For a brief summary go to https://www.mbnep.org/eelgrass/) For a perspective on Brant numbers in Morro Bay, in the early 2000s my counts would approach 4,000 and if you go back several decades Morro Bay used to have counts averaging 6,000 to 8,000 with a couple of high counts of over 11,000.
