Day 349: December 15th – Christmas Count

Sunny, light breeze, mid 40s

       It’s the day of the 2012 Annual Christmas Count and we are teamed up with our good friends Gerhard and Tracy.  Our area covers the eastern section of Orange County and we will concentrate in the Monroe and Washingtonville areas.

       We began along Orrs Mills Road where we birded the farm fields and the area near the famed Moodna railroad viaduct.  The morning was perfect for small birds as  the early sun was rapidly warming up the landscape and the winds were almost dead calm.  After finding several Red-tailed hawks keeping watch over the fields, we dropped down into the woodlands below the trestle and started to pick up some nice songbirds.  A number of Eastern bluebirds were found with two tending to their “winter quarters”, a excavation in an old dead stump.  Both white- and red- breasted nuthatches were busy working the bark of the trees as were a number of Black-capped chickadees and Tufted titmice.  As we exited the woodland trail, we found Goldfinches and more bluebirds flitting from tree to tree.

       One of our team members, Bob, called to say we should come over to Monroe to Earl’s Reservoir where he had just counted 13 Redpolls.  While not a year bird, it would be one of the few times I’ve ever seen this bird in Orange County and would certainly be a nice addition to the checklist for the Christmas Count.  So off we went. We got what we wanted!  Thirteen beautiful little finches with their bright red caps feeding as expected on the seeds of the birch trees.  The site also produced a Belted kingfisher, several buffleheads, and other lesser noteworthy birds to add to the list.

       From here, it was back to the Washingtonville area where we continued to find Red-tailed hawks scanning the farm fields.  One was sharing his tree with a good number of European starlings. 

       Back at the countdown later that evening, we found that all the teams had tallied 83 species and over 18,000 individual birds for the day.  The best finds of the day had to be the redpolls and a Northern shrike which was spotted by one of the other groups.  The count has really become an annual tradition of the holiday season for thousands of birders across the nation and we will continue the tradition once again as we head out next Saturday to cover the rest of the county.