Christmas Bird Count 2010

While some dyed in the wool birders were on the refuge searching for owls at four in the morning, I languished in bed until six.  :)  I’m all for the birds, but I’ve just reached that stage in my life where tromping through the marsh at that time in the morning just doesn’t thrill me any longer.

I met up with the group at the VIS a little later, and was assigned three other people to take along with me.  One woman even brought her poodle with her.  What’s up with that?  I like dogs, but this wasn’t the time or place to have a canine companion along in my opinion.  The pooch was pretty well behaved, and only barked when we left it in the car to do some of our counting.  Luckily, the birds were far enough away that the barking didn’t effect them.  The reason the owner put him in the Suburban is that he was walking in the cow pies.  I haven’t checked the back seat to see if I’ll be cleaning off cow pie paw prints tomorrow.  :(
Since I was the leader of our small group, today was not a day for taking pictures.  Two out of the three were pretty much beginning birders.  That’s not a bad thing.  They were able to point out some birds to me, they just didn’t know what they were.  However, I just couldn’t pass up a chance to try to get a shot of a bald eagle.  These were the only two shots I took all day.  This guy didn’t stay around to pose!  I could tell by the white head and tail that this was not one of the three eagles I saw last week.  So, there have been at least 4 bald eagles on the refuge in the past week.  That’s not very common.

With the areas I was assigned to count, we tallied over 12,000 snow geese, our most abundant bird for the count.  It was a pretty good birding day overall.  It remained overcast all day with surprisingly calm winds and temps in the 70’s and high humidity.  Of course, calm winds meant that there were probably more mosquitoes in the car than there were geese on the refuge!  :)  I didn’t have much skin showing, but the little buggers found every square inch that was available.  Can you say itchy and lumpy?  I guess I’ll just suffer in the name of science.  :)

Thanks for stopping by…. talk to you later,  Judy