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2008 Stillwater, OK Christmas Bird Count

undershirt: check
long johns: check
turtleneck: check
camo shirt: check
sweater: check
heavy winter coat: check

Yep, that’s 6 layers, and I was still freezing.

On Dec. 20th, I endured another Christmas Bird Count, as did a few other brave and hearty souls who spent some time with me. As always, it was a good, challenging, exhausting time, and it was worth every minute of the effort.

We began the night before, owling from about 9 – 11:30 pm. It was a clear, starlit, and thankfully windless night – perfect for calling in and hearing owls. I’m generally confident that I can ferret out barred and great horned owls during the daylight hours, so the focus of my nighttime owling is frequently on the smaller species. I have no idea if northern saw-whet owls might be about, but I call for them anyway. My real goal, however, was eastern screech owl – a species that should be much more in evidence around here than it is.

We made several stops along Hackelman Rd., the only place I know that has produced screech owls in recent years. We heard several barred owls in the distance, but couldn’t attract any close in. As always, there was plenty of noise pollution out there: distant cars, planes, pump-jacks “bump-bup-bup”-ing in the fields. The coyotes were especially entertaining –yipping, howling, and screeching on their own. Several times we were almost convinced we had a distant screech owl before, hearing the sound well, we could then determine it had been a particularly musical coyote. Once we were distracted by another odd sound night: a small flock of greater white-fronted geese overhead.

Finally, though, we were rewarded with the object of our search, and eastern screech owl. It buzzed us two or three times, but each time it perched too far away to be seen well in our flashlights. But there it was, giving us a rolling whistle intended to scare us away – or at least scare away the “screech owl” that was apparently hanging around those idiot humans standing in the road in the middle of the night . . .

In the end, our tally was 1 screech and 5 barred owls.

We met next at 5 am, with the intent to get in two hours of pre-dawn owling before really getting going with the count. Unlike the night before, we couldn’t buy a barred owl, but we did hear some great horneds. It was good that we invested those hours owling, as we never encountered another one at any point during the day.

In the early morning hours, we focused our attention on water birds at Lake Carl Blackwell. Our greatest reward there was probably the handful of Bonaparte’s gulls. Beautiful in plumage and graceful on the wing, they were a delight especially to the beginners among us who hadn’t realized that there were different kinds of gulls.

The warmth of the previous night was about to give way to a powerful cold front, and by 8:30 we were lashed by northwest winds gusting to 20-30 mph. The wind and cold would rule the day, with wind chills around 0 and birds hunkered down for shelter where they could. Faces stinging, eyes watering, and breaths stolen each time we turned into the wind, we pressed on. For a good part of the day, we made short sorties out of the van to see what was about.

Later in the day, the remaining three of us hiked a long loop, first walking transects through tallgrass prairie that revealed several LeConte’s sparrows. Then we swung through a riparian forest, welcome relief from the relentless wind, and delighted in dozens of robins and two flocks of turkeys. On the way back through upland forest and planted pine, we found red-headed woodpeckers, brown creepers, and a lone eastern phoebe. The highlight of the day, however, was still to come.

As I was headed back to the van from a grove of pine and cedar, I heard some kinglets (ruby-crowns) calling and decided to see if I could scare up a golden-crowned among them. I started a mixture of Northern pygmy owl calls and some standard pishing, and the birds came in. Then more and more came in. I soon had a few within arms’ reach and more in the trees just beyond. I noticed the call and then had the visual of one, and then several golden-crowneds. Then I figured out that something truly amazing was happening. As a conservative estimate, I was standing amid a flock of about 50 scolding ruby-crowned kinglets, with about 10 golden-crowneds thrown in for good measure. Finally, as the sun was setting on my 12th hour in the field that day, I was rewarded with one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in nature. I wouldn’t have been there, and it wouldn’t have happened, without the Christmas Bird Count.

(Ruby-crowned Kinglet photos courtesy of Zac Roehrs)

I never warmed up that night. I fell asleep on the couch – in 5 of my 6 layers – and eventually roused myself just enough to get into bed. It also took me a couple of days to tally my observations. In the end, I encountered 68 species in not quite 15 hours of birding. Not too shabby . . .

142 Canada Goose
~ 20 Cackling Goose
~ 20 Greater White-fronted Goose
23 Mallard
3 Northern Shoveler
2 Ring-necked Duck
1 Canvasback
8 Pied-billed Grebe
1 American White Pelican
1 Double-crested Cormorant
4 Great Blue Heron
6 American Coot
14 Ring-billed Gull
1 Herring Gull
4 Bonaparte’s Gull
2 Belted Kingfisher
1 Killdeer
36 Wild Turkey
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
3 Bald Eagle
1 American Kestrel
4 Northern Harrier
1 Red-shouldered Hawk
3 Great Horned Owl
5 Barred Owl
1 Eastern Screech Owl
4 Rock Pigeons
16 Mourning Doves
3 Common Flicker (1 Red-shafted, 2 Yellow-shafted)
3 Red-headed Woodpecker
6 Red-bellied Woodpecker
2 Hairy Woodpecker
3 Downy Woodpecker
3 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
1 Eastern Phoebe
24 Blue Jay
18 American Crow
7 Carolina Chickadee
2 Tufted Titmouse
1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
1 White-breasted Nuthatch
3 Brown Creeper
3 Carolina Wren
80 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
15 Golden-crowned Kinglet
27 Eastern Bluebird
225 American Robin
4 Northern Mockingbird
1 Brown Thrasher
70 Cedar Waxwing
~ 50 European Starling
130 Yellow-rumped Warbler
1 Orange-crowned Warbler
25 Northern Cardinal
12 Field Sparrow
5 LeConte’s Sparrow
2 Fox Sparrow
13 Song Sparrow
3 Swamp Sparrow
13 White-throated Sparrow
7 Harris’s Sparrow
167 Dark-eyed Junco
6 Eastern Meadowlark
250 Brewer’s Blackbird
2 Brown-headed Cowbird
4 House Finch
10 American Goldfinches
10 House Sparrows