{"id":1005426,"date":"2020-01-01T07:49:34","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T12:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1005426"},"modified":"2022-04-24T14:00:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T18:00:34","slug":"2020-the-year-in-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2020\/01\/01\/2020-the-year-in-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 The Year in Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>eBird tells me I saw a reasonable 346 species last year. There are probably a few here and there I didn&#8217;t report. 165 of those were in Kings County. That&#8217;s not awful given that I didn&#8217;t take any international trips or birding tours last year. Thanks to a Shearwater pelagic out of Monterey, I added 4 life birds to my list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Black-footed Albatross \tShearwater Journeys_09\/15\/2019_Leg 5\/6 \tUS-CA \t15 Sep 2019<\/li>\n<li>Sabine&#8217;s Gull \tShearwater Journeys_09\/15\/2019_Leg 3\/6 \tUS-CA \t15 Sep 2019<\/li>\n<li>Red Phalarope \tShearwater Journeys_09\/15\/2019_Leg 1\/6 \tUS-CA \t15 Sep 2019 \t<\/li>\n<li>Ashy Storm-Petrel \tMonterey Bay pelagic&#8211;inshore Monterey Harbor to Pt. Pinos (MTY Co.)<\/li>\n<li>Black-throated Magpie-Jay \tKit Carson Park \tUS-CA \t23 Aug 2019 <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s actually five species, but the Black-throated Magpie-Jay isn&#8217;t officially countable in the U.S. since it likely either is or descends from escaped pets and does not have an established population. Still a gorgeous bird though.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t add any birds to my New York state list last year.<br \/>\nThere were a few opportunities but nothing that seemed worth the effort of chasing, given that they were all birds I routinely see out west.<\/p>\n<p>Besides the pelagic birds and the Magpie Jay, I added Ruff and Yellow-crowned Night Heron to my<br \/>\n California list bringing that state to 324. Both of those were in Orange County where I now have an even 250 species. I missed a couple of others there though including Swainson&#8217;s Hawk and Laughing Gull. <\/p>\n<p>I made one trip to Louisiana for Christmas Count where I managed to add<br \/>\n4 species to that state&#8217;s list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\t\tCommon Ground Dove \tBayou Sauvage NWR&#8211;Ridge Trail \tUS-LA \t27 Dec 2019 \t<\/li>\n<li>Clapper Rail \tBayou Sauvage NWR&#8211;Ridge Trail \tUS-LA \t27 Dec 2019 <\/li>\n<li>Brown-crested Flycatcher \tChalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery (Jean Lafitte NHP@Pres) \tUS-LA \t27 Dec 2019 <\/li>\n<li>Western Sandpiper \tNorthwest Area, NOCBC<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Brown-crested Flycatcher took six trips and I only saw it for half a second, but it is an ABA area bird for me.<\/p>\n<p>For Kings County I added Canvasback and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher bringing the total in my home county to 279. 300 used to seem impossible here, but there are now at least eight people who have crossed that mark and a couple of others who are very close so who knows? Maybe in another few years I can hit it. There are still several regular species that show up every year I&#8217;ve yet to find in Brooklyn including Cliff Swallow, Black Vulture, Red Knot, Golden Eagle, and lately Brown Pelican. I&#8217;ve seen most of the rarities and mega-rarities here in the last 15 years with the notable exception of several that showed up during the two years I lived in California.<\/p>\n<p>In New York County, I added 16 species, bringing that to 189:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\tSaltmarsh Sparrow \tUnion Square \t25 Oct 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tLark Sparrow \tCentral Park&#8211;North Meadow \t23 Oct 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tDickcissel \tCentral Park&#8211;North End \t02 Oct 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tVirginia Rail \tAbingdon Square Park \t01 Oct 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tSemipalmated Sandpiper \tInwood Hill Park&#8211;Spuyten Duyvil Creek \t07 Aug 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tLeast Sandpiper \tGovernors Island 17 Jul 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tKilldeer \tGovernors Island 11 Jul 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tProthonotary Warbler \tCentral Park&#8211;The Ramble \t31 May 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tWorm-eating Warbler \tCentral Park \t08 May 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tSolitary Sandpiper \tCentral Park \t03 May 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tBlue-winged Warbler \tCentral Park \t03 May 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tBelted Kingfisher \tCentral Park&#8211;The Ramble \t24 Apr 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tBlue-gray Gnatcatcher \tCentral Park&#8211;The Ramble \t24 Apr 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tField Sparrow \tCentral Park&#8211;The Ramble \t24 Apr 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tCanvasback \tSwindler Cove Park and Sherman Creek \t14 Feb 2019<\/li>\n<li>\t\tNorthern Saw-whet Owl \tCentral Park&#8211;North End \t02 Jan 2019US-NY \t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Honestly, I&#8217;ve probably seen some of the more common ones like Killdeer, Belted Kingfisher, and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher in Central Park before I started keeping relatively detailed records. <\/p>\n<p>The biggest uptick was in Clark County, Nevada. I traveled to Las Vegas twice, and although I whiffed repeatedly on Crissal Thrasher, I did score a respectable 102 total species for Nevada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>eBird tells me I saw a reasonable 346 species last year. There are probably a few here and there I didn&#8217;t report. 165 of those were in Kings County. That&#8217;s not awful given that I didn&#8217;t take any international trips or birding tours last year. Thanks to a Shearwater pelagic out of Monterey, I added [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005432,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005426\/revisions\/1005432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}