The Great Backyard Bird Count--2010 results

Our results this year were for the Great Backyard Bird Count were not much better than our results last year. We counted in our own yard for three days (Friday, Sunday, and Monday). What did we see? Ducks, but since they were in flight in the distance, we couldn't identify what kind they were so they didn't count. A little bird on a tree that might have been a woodpecker, but it was too fast and stayed mostly on the back of the tree, so we never got a good look at it. Again, it didn't count. Finally, on the last day, we had 2 mallards fly over close enough that we could definitively identify them--they counted! Yay! We didn't even get to count our resident sparrows! They hid for the whole weekend. We have seen them literally every day since then. Sigh.

Remember how I had also scheduled a trip to Grandpa's house, where there are ALWAYS a ton of birds? Yeah, a ton. Except for the day we were there. We did manage to see a northern cardinal, 2 black-capped chickadees, 2 crows, and 2 red-tailed hawks in the hour we watched. I would have said that was phenomenal, except that the last time we were there the feeder was literally crawling with birds, including 2 kinds of woodpeckers, juncos, blue jays, a male and female cardinal, and sparrows. None of them came to visit while we watched, though.

Grandpa said the birds have been there often since that day, though. He had a good chuckle about it, so I guess something good came from it. I like to make him laugh.

Even with the lack of birds, Kiddo thought it was great. He wants to do it more often (as he wanted last year) so I think we'll have to work it into our curriculum to do a backyard bird count once a month. That will give us the opportunity to see what kinds of birds we have when.

And next year? Next year we will have a feeder out starting in December!

You can see the results from this years count here.