Glen Valley Bird Count - my area (May 26, 2012)

[Randy]

Hi everyone, I thought I would give a quick post about the Glen Valley bird count yesterday. It was an early morning start, there's not a lot of things I get out of bed at 5 am for, but birding is one! My trio was given the "wetlands" section. This area was essentially between 80th and 64th ave and 264th and 252nd street. Most of our time was spent slightly south of 72nd, where there is a forested area with trails along with a decent sized marsh in the middle.

Nothing too remarkable, we came out with 47 species. Unfortunately all of the warblers were audible IDs - it was impossible to pick them out of the canopy!

LOTS of pacific wren, swainsons thrush, and BH grosbeak!

Notable misses included RT hawk and rufous hummingbird.

I also don't have any pictures to share - not much for good photo-ops.

Here's our list:


Wood Duck 25 (about 11 chicks I believe)
Mallard 17
Bufflehead 1
Hooded Merganser 8 (7 chicks)
Pied-billed Grebe 2
Great Blue Heron 5
Turkey Vulture 2
Spotted Sandpiper 2
Glaucous-winged Gull 7
Band-tailed Pigeon 2
Barred Owl 1
Red-breasted Sapsucker 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 1
Pacific-slope Flycatcher 8
Steller's Jay 3
Northwestern Crow 21
Tree Swallow 15
Violet-green Swallow 1
Barn Swallow 6
Black-capped Chickadee 18
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 10
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Brown Creeper 10
Pacific Wren 25
Golden-crowned Kinglet 3
Swainson's Thrush 43
American Robin 15
European Starling 21
Cedar Waxwing 3
Yellow Warbler 2
Black-throated Gray Warbler 1
Townsend's Warbler 1
Wilson's Warbler 10
Spotted Towhee 16
Song Sparrow 24
White-crowned Sparrow 4
Dark-eyed Junco 13
Western Tanager 5
Black-headed Grosbeak 16
Red-winged Blackbird 8
Brewer's Blackbird 4
Brown-headed Cowbird 5
Purple Finch 1
House Finch 2
American Goldfinch 4

[martin]

Great list, looks like you had a very good outing. I would have been hard pressed to id from calls alone., good job.

[Randy]

Thanks Martin,

I didn't mean to take credit for all the call IDs. I can handle some of them, however one of my other group members (Brian) was a whiz with the warbler calls!!!

[Chris]

Wow, I am impressed with the amount of Swainson's Thrushes and Pacific Wrens.

[Randy]

Yeah they were EVERYWHERE in our area. In addition to BonJuan's post, here's a summary from the organizer:

"Hi

We had a great turn out this year for the Glen Valley Spring Bird Count, 21 volunteers in total headed out into the beautiful sunshine to count. We counted 77 different bird species and a total of 3440 birds, so about average.

Attached is a table with all of the results (see BonJuan's post).

Some of the notables from the 2012 count:

[bonjuan3]

Good to see your addition to the bird count info from Lisa. I, too, would have liked to have met you, Randy. We may bump into each other in the field. If not, there's always next year's GV bird count.
John