Birding!

[esoxlucius]

A beautiful little creature, vicious as hell mind. Obviously we have stoats in the UK too. They're quite common, though in the UK, which doesn't get anywhere near as cold as Canada, they don't turn white in winter.

I believe when they turn white in winter that's when they take on the name ermine, any other time when they're drab brown they're just the common stoat?

I've always found ours to be very shy and elusive, it's rare you see them, so yours sniffing about your feet is quite the surprise for me.

 

[The Masked Shadow]

I also participated in the Christmas Bird Count here, and I was assigned to the southwesternmost area of the continental US; Border Field State Park, directly on the border with Tijuana.

We had 7 people including myself on the count, and because our area was so incredibly large, we split into 2 groups. I walked a total of 8 miles, going into riparian areas, alongside brackish streams, over coastal salt marsh, and along the beach (extending far out into the water for pelagics). San Diego this time of year is a hotspot for birds escaping the frigid winters up north, so my group compiled a list of over 70 birds!?

The highlights:
- 2 Common Loon
- 90 Snowy Plovers (yes 90, they are endangered)
- 1 Semipalmated (I’m highlighting this because I was able to pick him out of his 90 Snowy friends)
- 7 raptor species (RTHA, COHA, TUVU, WTKI, NOHA, ABOW, GHOW)
- 165 Western/Clarks Grebes

And the birds unique to our plot:
- 1 Rufous-crowned Sparrow
- 1 Loggerhead Shrike

^ the RCSP was expected, as it is just about the only place to see them in south san diego, but the LOSH was a pleasant surprise; wintering rarity.

We did encounter a mild problem, however. Swinhoe’s White-eye, an invasive warbler-like bird that has established a population in the last couple years, was one we would’ve liked to count so that it could be seen on the CBC that these devils were in Border Field, and we did see one…but it was across the border, foraging probably 20 feet over. Considering that birds dont pay attention to politics and country division lines, we were hoping it would fly across…and I kid you not, it flew to a mere 3 feet from the first border wall (there are 2), foraging in some lemonadeberry, and then flew to its first foraging area, where it stayed for the remainder of the time we were looking at it. So unfortunately, we did not count SWWE in our CBC list, but a species total of 70 is not too shabby!

 

[jjohnwm]

Considering that birds dont pay attention to politics and country division lines, we were hoping it would fly across…and I kid you not, it flew to a mere 3 feet from the first border wall (there are 2), foraging in some lemonadeberry, and then flew to its first foraging area, where it stayed for the remainder of the time we were looking at it. So unfortunately, we did not count SWWE in our CBC list, but a species total of 70 is not too shabby!

I always get a chuckle out of the anally-obsessed birders who think these rules were inscribed by lightning bolts into stone slabs, brought down by Moses from off the mountain. Sounds like you have that type of birder down there as well.

What if that bird had gotten between the two walls, into that narrow No-Man's-Land strip? Could you count it then? I'll bet your rule-makers discussed that at length...

Your count sounds quite different from ours up here. All of ours are limited to a circle with a radius of 7.5 miles (12km) and I once had a car partner who pointed out that a specific bird we were counting was so close to that imaginary and arbitrary boundary that we needed to wait a bit to see if it strayed a wee bit closer to us so that we could be absolutely certain it was countable. That was an interesting afternoon...

Is your count not also done in a fixed 15-mile circle? If so, you don't have any more area to cover than any other Xmas bird count; in fact, it sounds as though your circle is on the coast and extends out some distance over the water, so you actually have less land to cover than most counts. But I'm shocked at how few counters you had. Eight people is exactly the number we had in our nearby count the other day. Six of those lived within the circle or at least very nearby, and my friend and I were the outliers as we had to drive about an hour to get there.

Considering the population density of your area versus mine, I would have thought you'd have many more counters than we did. My "home" count, where I actually live, was postponed due to a winter storm until Jan3; it usually has about 12-15 counters, many of whom make the arduous trek from the teeming metropolis of Winnipeg (population about 850,000 ) about an hour away. That's by far the biggest city in the province; second place goes to Brandon with just over 50,000!

So we have far fewer than one million people living within an hour...or even three hours...of the count circle, and we get less than 20 people coming out for the count. How many millions live within an hour of that park you were counting? I can see a city in the background; where are all the birders?

I always thought our numbers of counters were sad...but, relative speaking, yours are much worse. Now, mind you, we count usually in pairs and usually never even get out of the vehicle...whereas you seem to be traipsing around on foot through the desert...so you probably miss a lot of birds that you just never get close to. Up here, we are mostly scanning denuded trees or empty pastures...on a pancake-flat snow-covered landscape...and trying to cover the whole area. A bird here in December sticks out like a cockroach on a wedding cake. We probably count a much higher percentage of the birds present than you do...but, of course, there aren't nearly as many here to begin with.

70 species on a Xmas count? That's a pipe-dream for us here.

 

[jjohnwm]

A beautiful little creature, vicious as hell mind. Obviously we have stoats in the UK too. They're quite common, though in the UK, which doesn't get anywhere near as cold as Canada, they don't turn white in winter.

I believe when they turn white in winter that's when they take on the name ermine, any other time when they're drab brown they're just the common stoat?

I've always found ours to be very shy and elusive, it's rare you see them, so yours sniffing about your feet is quite the surprise for me.

We have several species of small weasels here; in my area we have Long-tailed Weasel, Short-tailed Weasel and Least Weasel; they all turn white in winter. I think "Stoat" is just the common British term for what we (properly! ) call a Weasel.

The middle one, the Short-tailed, is the only one called an Ermine, winter or summer. That's the one I have hanging around here. He (or she?...or they?...) were extremely visible throughout our late fall; we had no snow on the ground until the very end of November, very unusual for us, but the critters' colour change schedule is based upon length of daylight so they were white much too early this year for their own good.

They are virtually invisible during summer; in winter they are extremely bold and unafraid. I see them regularly outside, often pursuing a vole or field mouse across the snow.

 

[The Masked Shadow]

I always get a chuckle out of the anally-obsessed birders who think these rules were inscribed by lightning bolts into stone slabs, brought down by Moses from off the mountain. Sounds like you have that type of birder down there as well.

What if that bird had gotten between the two walls, into that narrow No-Man's-Land strip? Could you count it then? I'll bet your rule-makers discussed that at length...

Your count sounds quite different from ours up here. All of ours are limited to a circle with a radius of 7.5 miles (12km) and I once had a car partner who pointed out that a specific bird we were counting was so close to that imaginary and arbitrary boundary that we needed to wait a bit to see if it strayed a wee bit closer to us so that we could be absolutely certain it was countable. That was an interesting afternoon...

Is your count not also done in a fixed 15-mile circle? If so, you don't have any more area to cover than any other Xmas bird count; in fact, it sounds as though your circle is on the coast and extends out some distance over the water, so you actually have less land to cover than most counts. But I'm shocked at how few counters you had. Eight people is exactly the number we had in our nearby count the other day. Six of those lived within the circle or at least very nearby, and my friend and I were the outliers as we had to drive about an hour to get there.

Considering the population density of your area versus mine, I would have thought you'd have many more counters than we did. My "home" count, where I actually live, was postponed due to a winter storm until Jan3; it usually has about 12-15 counters, many of whom make the arduous trek from the teeming metropolis of Winnipeg (population about 850,000 ) about an hour away. That's by far the biggest city in the province; second place goes to Brandon with just over 50,000!

So we have far fewer than one million people living within an hour...or even three hours...of the count circle, and we get less than 20 people coming out for the count. How many millions live within an hour of that park you were counting? I can see a city in the background; where are all the birders?

I always thought our numbers of counters were sad...but, relative speaking, yours are much worse. Now, mind you, we count usually in pairs and usually never even get out of the vehicle...whereas you seem to be traipsing around on foot through the desert...so you probably miss a lot of birds that you just never get close to. Up here, we are mostly scanning denuded trees or empty pastures...on a pancake-flat snow-covered landscape...and trying to cover the whole area. A bird here in December sticks out like a cockroach on a wedding cake. We probably count a much higher percentage of the birds present than you do...but, of course, there aren't nearly as many here to begin with.

70 species on a Xmas count? That's a pipe-dream for us here.

Our CBC’s are split into 5 mile radii, and each group gets assigned a plot inside one of the 5-mile areas. There are TONS of plots in the areas. Our plot had a group of 7 people, and if our plot had 7 people, and there were at minimum 50 plots, thats 350 people, assuming 7 is the number of people assigned to each plot.

As for my plot including the ocean, it did include offshore about a mile, so we did scan for pelagics, of which we saw none. We did catch 2 loons, a couple surf scoters, some various gulls, a bunch of grebes, and some flying peeps. But I stull walked 8 miles!!!

 

[jjohnwm]

Our CBC’s are split into 5 mile radii, and each group gets assigned a plot inside one of the 5-mile areas. There are TONS of plots in the areas. Our plot had a group of 7 people, and if our plot had 7 people, and there were at minimum 50 plots, thats 350 people, assuming 7 is the number of people assigned to each plot.

As for my plot including the ocean, it did include offshore about a mile, so we did scan for pelagics, of which we saw none. We did catch 2 loons, a couple surf scoters, some various gulls, a bunch of grebes, and some flying peeps. But I stull walked 8 miles!!!

Lol, that sounds more like it! I read your first post and thought that you had only 8 people for the entire count circle...like we did!

I took part in a couple of counts in the US many years ago, in Pennsylvania and in New York. There were so many people that the overall feeling was that we were invading Normandy rather than counting birds. A different kind of fun. I prefer my current environment.

I chuckled a bit when we were issued our vehicle signs. The organizers had alerted the RCMP about the event, so they were weren't caught off guard by an influx of calls from landowners reporting carloads of suspicious looking retirees slowly cruising the back roads. Even so, we saw the local Horseman twice as we did our route; he couldn't have failed to note the fairly obvious sign indicating, in less colloquial terms, that we were crazy but harmless. One time he even stopped to chat for a few minutes; he seemed bemused when we indicated that we had a schedule to maintain and that time was of the essence...and then we chugged on down the road at our normal 10 kph...