I ran another Big Day at Montrose today, May 21. My first Big Day on May 8 yielded 103 species in 5.5 hours, split between 4.5 hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Today I started at 5:30 a.m. and ended at 10 for the morning shift, and again from 4 to 5 p.m. for the afternoon shift, so I started and ended at the same time and did the same number of hours as my May 8 attempt. I ended up with 103 species, the same as last time. I couldn’t have picked a better day to do a Big Day as Montrose was loaded with birds. I haven’t seen passerine numbers like this in some years. Every tree and shrub seemed to be dripping with warblers. Here’s my complete list:
|
Canada Goose Mallard Blue-winged Teal Red-breasted Merganser Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Green Heron Least Bittern Black-crowned Night-Heron Cooper’s Hawk American Coot Black-bellied Plover Semipalmated Plover Killdeer Spotted Sandpiper Least Sandpiper White-rumped Sandpiper Semipalmated Sandpiper Dunlin Short-billed Dowitcher Sanderling Herring Gull Ring-billed Gull Forster’s Tern Caspian Tern Mourning Dove Chimney Swift Downy Woodpecker Black-billed Cuckoo Olive-sided Flycatcher Eastern Wood-Pewee Least Flycatcher Alder Flycatcher Willow Flycatcher Yellow-bellied Flycatcher Great Crested Flycatcher Eastern Kingbird Red-eyed Vireo Philadelphia Vireo Warbling Vireo Purple Martin Bank Swallow Barn Swallow Northern Rough-winged Swallow Tree Swallow Cliff Swallow Black-capped Chickadee Marsh Wren Ruby-crowned Kinglet Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Gray-cheeked Thrush Veery |
Swainson’s Thrush Wood Thrush American Robin Gray Catbird European Starling Cedar Waxwing Orange-crowned Warbler Nashville Warbler Tennessee Warbler Northern Parula Yellow Warbler Chestnut-sided Warbler Magnolia Warbler Yellow-rumped Warbler Black-throated Blue Warbler Blackburnian Warbler Bay-breasted Warbler Blackpoll Warbler Cape May Warbler Palm Warbler Black-and-white Warbler American Redstart Northern Waterthrush Ovenbird Canada Warbler Wilson’s Warbler Common Yellowthroat Yellow-breasted Chat Mourning Warbler Connecticut Warbler Chipping Sparrow Clay-colored Sparrow Savannah Sparrow Lincoln’s Sparrow Swamp Sparrow Song Sparrow White-crowned Sparrow White-throated Sparrow Grasshopper Sparrow Northern Cardinal Indigo Bunting Bobolink Dickcissel Scarlet Tanager Red-winged Blackbird Common Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole American Goldfinch |
I had 98 species in the morning and 5 more when I went back in the afternoon. The 5 additional birds I had in the afternoon were Cliff Swallow, Black-crowned Night-Heron, American Coot, Northern Parula, and White-throated Sparrow. Unlike last time I checked the Golf Course Pond, which added the Night-Heron. I also had 24 species of warblers, which is the best I’ve done at Montrose in a long time.