Eat more cookies

It’s been pretty busy around here lately, and one big event for the week was our annual Christmas Bird Count. I was in the field with 6 newbies last Saturday, and we did our best to find as many species as possible despite some deplorable weather.Our forecast was for 4-8″ of snow in Stillwater, and we seriously considered canceling the count to keep people safe.  But it got warmer overnight, and by dawn it was about 37 degrees with mist and fog.  But the bottom fell out soon after that: by 8 am, we were stung in the face by horizontal sleet at Lake Carl Blackwell, and by 9:30 we found ourselves in wind-whipped snowflakes that stuck around all day. But we kept plugging away, and did what we could from the van.  In the end, we didn’t have such a bad day: western grebe and lapland longspur were great highlights!  Here’s the total:   Brewer’s Blackbird  
200 Red-winged Blackbird 200 Mallard 124 Brown-headed Cowbird 120 Dark-eyed Junco 83 Horned Lark 50 American Goldfinch 46 Cedar Waxwing 40 Canada Goose 38 Yellow-rumped Warbler 33 Lapland Longspur 30 House Sparrow 20 Blue Jay 16 American Robin 16 American Crow 15 Northern Cardinal 14 Eastern Meadowlark* 14 Ring-billed Gull 12 American Coot 10 Common Flicker* 9 Double-crested Cormorant 8 Carolina Chickadee 8 Eastern Bluebird 6 White-throated Sparrow 6 European Starling 5 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 4 Red-breasted Merganser 3 Northern Harrier 3 Red-tailed Hawk* 3 Fox Sparrow 3 Pied-billed Grebe 2 Great Blue Heron 2 Northern Bobwhite 2 Tufted Titmouse 2 Red-breasted Nuthatch 2 Hermit Thrush 2 Eastern Towhee 2 Gadwall 1 Western Grebe 1 Belted Kingfisher 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Hairy Woodpecker 1 Winter Wren 1 Carolina Wren 1 Pine Warbler 1 Orange-crowned Warbler 1 LeConte’s Sparrow 1 Song Sparrow 1

flurry of blackbirdswestern grebe (L) and American coot