Date: 1/21/26 5:31 pm From: David Assmann via groups.io <david_assmann...> Subject: [pen-bird] 2025 San Francisco Christmas Bird Count Results
The 2025 San Francisco Christmas Bird Count was one of the best in many years. Although our final species total of 183 did not set a record (falling two short) and the Count Week total of 185 fell six short of a record, the number of birds counted was the second highest ever at 94,315 (second only to 95,939 in 1986), up 36,985 from last year's total of 57,330. We set a record for the number of participants, with 214 birders participating. Our most common bird species was the Red-throated Loon at 9,225. Several species showed dramatic increases from last year - Common Murre went from 3 to 7,785; Northern Pintail from 0 to 412; Band-tailed Pigeon from 5 to 5,368; and American Robin from 698 to 4,171. We did not miss any common bird species.
We set all time Count records for a number of species. Greater White-fronted Goose (44), Snow Goose (3), Redhead (6), Common Loon (55), Great Blue Heron (59), Bald Eagle (7), Red-tailed Hawk (269), Common Murre (7,785), Band-tailed Pigeon (5,368), Great Horned Owl (34), White-throated Swift (25), Nuttall’s Woodpeckers (137), Steller’s Jay (174), American Crow (3,260), Bewick’s Wren (152), American Robin (4,171), Black-and-white Warbler (2), Tennessee Warbler (3), Orange-crowned Warbler (109) and Wilson’s Warbler (3). No new birds were added to the Count, but the Grace’s Warbler sighting represented only the second sighting ever, and the MacGillivray’s Warbler and Rufous-crowned Sparrow were seen for only the third time.
However, there were declines for some species - Sanderlings dropped from 2,430 to 1,190; California Gull went from 3,327 to 1,554 and White-crowned Sparrow numbers declined from 3,480 to 2,552. We set an all-time low for Marbled Godwit with 7. We will be doing more analysis on trends and posting more results later.
Thanks to the Area Leaders - Jonah Benningfield, David Assmann, Josiah Clark, Keith Maley, Joachim Gonzales, Travis Smith, Lydia Bruno, Zac Denning, Whitney Grover, Adam Winer, Dominik Mosur, Maureen Lahiff, Bob Toleno, Juli Chamberlin, Siobhan Ruck, Crima Pogge, Noreen Weeden, Eddie Bartley, Cedric Duhalde and Liam Murphy. Special thanks to my *co-compilers, Anna Sojourner, Patrick Meeker and Keith Maley for putting in many hours behind the scenes working on the Count. Thanks also to San Francisco Bay Keeper for once again providing a boat free of charge, and to the Golden Gate Bird Alliance for sponsoring the Count, and handling all the logistics for the Count Dinner.*
*Next year's count will be on Monday December 28th.*
