The mild weather leading up to the count resulted in more open water than we often have and this probably resulted in a record count of great blue herons as well as good numbers of common mergansers. Remember, our count circle is rather land locked. That being said both the Oreland and Ambler reservoirs had a nice smattering of ducks including hooded mergansers, wood ducks and ring-necked ducks. The Ambler reservoir also had a lesser black-backed gull on it once again.

Other notable sightings included the first northern oriole for our count since 1985 seen near Carpenter’s Woods by Keith Russell; pine siskin and white-crowned sparrow both seen for the first time since 1993 by Brett Wolfe in the Abington/Huntingdon Valley area, an adult bald eagle seen by Dale Twining and Tom McVey in Hatboro and three eastern screech-owls found by Bert Filemyr and myself. Two of the screech-owls were found at Briar Bush Nature Center and the other one was at Crosswicks. The group working Morris Arboretum found rusty blackbirds and the lone red-winged blackbird for the count.

I would once again like to thank everyone who went out looking for birds, without your help and participation Christmas Bird Counts don’t succeed. I would like to thank Nancy Hence, Pam Serenty and Rosalie Wilkes for supplying goodies at the compilation. Lastly I would like to thank Bert Filemyr for his statistical wizardry once again.

Next year’s count will be on December 18th, so mark you calendars now.

Martin Selzer

Weather : Sunny/Partly Sunny
27-45 degrees F.
No Precipitation

Still Water: Slightly Ice covered
Moving Water: Open

Time : 4:30 – 16:00

Participants :
51 observers
17 parties

Owling Hours : 2.5 Hours
Owling Miles : 27 Miles

Feeder Watchers :1
Feeder Watcher Hours : 1

Party Hours :
Total – 73.25
Foot – 58.75
Car – 15

Party Miles :
Total –256
Foot – 60
Car – 196

Total Species :69
Average for all counts – 50
Average for past 10 years - 65

New Species Seen :None

Record High Counts :
Great Blue Heron............ 15
Northern Harrier (tie) .................2
Lesser Black-backed Gull (tie) .......1
Eastern Phoebe (tied).......... 1

Species Seen During Count Week
But Not On Count Day:
None

Species of Note :
Blue Jay (low numbers)
American Crow (low numbers)
Carolina Chickadee (low numbers)
Tufted Titmouse (low numbers)
White-crowned Sparrow
(First time on count since 1993)
Northern Oriole
(First time on count since 1985)
Pine Siskin
(First time on count since 1993)