Great Backyard Bird Count 2014

This Saturday morning I had an extra reason to hike around the park. Yesterday through Monday is the annual 2014 Great Backyard Bird Count. This count is a joint venture between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Audubon Society and Bird Studies Canada. Furthermore it is powered by a widely used online reporting website called ebird. Since becoming a full-fledged bird geek in recent years, I've participated in both this count as well as what is called the annual "Christmas Bird Count." I've gotta say that I prefer the Great Backyard Bird Count or "GBBC" as it is just all around an easier commitment to make. Whereas with the Christmas Bird count you are encouraged to go out in groups, cover a LOT of ground –much of it by car– AND have a designated expert in identification among your group, the GBBC essentially lets you do everything on your own. You can cover as little or as much ground you like, and in fact you could do it from your window without even leaving home! So for at least one day a year in February, I like to be a little more fastidious when I'm out bird watching so that I can report my results. I did have a little help from a friend today in doing so, though we didn't make it all the way around the park. With the temp being at only 5 degrees above zero, and with my lower back still bothering me, we only hiked about half the trails. Probably the highlight though was a Hawk that we spotted not too far in from the trail. At first I thought this was a Red-tailed Hawk but upon closer look and seeing a long, bared tail we concluded it is a Cooper's Hawk. We also saw a fairly large flock of House Finches in the same area and were wondering if maybe the Hawk was watching them as well. The other most interesting thing we spotted could unfortunately not be counted as it was dead! Some time earlier another park goer stopped to ask us "what kind of feathers were these?" We both thought they looked like Pheasant feathers. Then later we started noticing more similar feathers laying on the trail. My friend then spotted a dark spot about 10 feet off the trail. There laying mangled in the snow was indeed a rooster Pheasant. Our first though was that it was likely attacked by a Great Horned Owl. So we looked for "wingtip imprints" in the snow and sure enough there they were. These are hard to take a photo of and so I passed on that. But I do have some photos of it here in an older blog entry. Whatever did kill this Pheasant didn't stick around long enough to consume everything it could. There was lots of it left. This is kind of a disturbing photo, but you can see some of what the Pheasant had eaten in it's lifetime.

Following is our bird count report submitted to ebird.org.

Palmer Lake Park, Hennepin, US-MN
Feb 14, 2014 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM
Protocol: Traveling
2.0 mile(s)
Comments:     5 degrees above zero, snow heading in soon.5 species

Cooper's Hawk  1
Downy Woodpecker  2
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Black-capped Chickadee  5
House Finch  35

View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S16956735

This report was generated automatically by the Great Backyard Bird Count (http://gbbc.birdcount.org)