Thank you to the over 2200 birders, which is close to the record high, who participated in the 126th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count, despite some challenging weather conditions. They reported more than 233 thousand birds of 127 species. Both represent somewhat of a drop from recent counts.
The cold weather earlier in December resulted in many lakes in the state already frozen and a drop in waterfowl numbers and diversity. In addition many of the winter species numbers were low including crossbills, siskins, and longspurs. Still a few like Juncos and Pine Grosbeaks were well represented in the state. While most common winter residents did not have unexpected numbers, some of the less common birds were definitely more widely reported than expected including American Robin, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Golden Eagle, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Red-winged Blackbird.
The story of the count was the 28 Eurasian Tree-Sparrow found on 5 counts. This is up from 3 birds birds a couple of years ago, which shattered the "casual" designation of species at the time. Later counts at a couple of the sites indicated that even these numbers were a fraction of the birds at these locations.
Data entry has been completed with 91 of the 92 counts reporting. The Philbrook count with over 20 years of counting and Long Prairie count with over 35 years in central Minnesota will be inactive next year unless a new compiler can be found. The Philbrook count data was never submitted and I don't even know if the count was conducted.
A more in depth analysis is in the works.
Steve Weston On Quigley Lake in Eagan, MN <sweston2g...>
