Great Backyard Bird Count – Count for Sunday February 17, 2008

We have saved your bird checklist. Thank you for participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count!

Record ID: S3568828 (You will need to refer to this number if you wish to correspond about your data.)
Locality: 94506, Danville, Contra Costa County, CA
Observation Date: FEB 17, 2008	Email: randall.whitney@prodigy.net
Start Time: 11:00 AM	Snow Depth: No snow was present
Total Birding Time: 45 minutes	Location Type: Yard
Party Size: 1Skill: excellentWeather: excellent	Habitat(s): deciduous woods coniferous woods suburban
Number of species: 17	All Reported: yes
Species Count Red-tailed Hawk 1 Mourning Dove 1 Anna’s Hummingbird 2 Steller’s Jay 3 Western Scrub-Jay 7 American Crow 1 Chestnut-backed Chickadee 2 Oak Titmouse 1 Hermit Thrush 1 American Robin 1 California Towhee 1 Fox Sparrow 1 White-crowned Sparrow 3 Golden-crowned Sparrow 2 Dark-eyed Junco 4 House Finch 12 American Goldfinch 2

Great Backyard Bird Count – Count for Saturday February 16, 2008

We have saved your bird checklist. Thank you for participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count!

Record ID: S3549321 (You will need to refer to this number if you wish to correspond about your data.)
Locality: 94506, Danville, Contra Costa County, CA
Observation Date: FEB 16, 2008	Email: randall.whitney@prodigy.net
Start Time: 9:45 AM	Snow Depth: No snow was present
Total Birding Time: 1 hour	Location Type: Yard
Party Size: 1Skill: excellentWeather: excellent	Habitat(s): deciduous woods coniferous woods suburban
Number of species: 18	All Reported: yes
Species Count Turkey Vulture 1 Cooper’s Hawk 1 Red-tailed Hawk 2 Mourning Dove 1 Anna’s Hummingbird 2 Western Scrub-Jay 2 Chestnut-backed Chickadee 2 Oak Titmouse 1 Hermit Thrush 1 American Robin 5 Cedar Waxwing 1 Spotted Towhee 1 California Towhee 1 White-crowned Sparrow 5 Golden-crowned Sparrow 3 Dark-eyed Junco 6 House Finch 13 American Goldfinch 2

Great Backyard Bird Count – Count for Friday February 15, 2008

We have saved your bird checklist. Thank you for participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count!

Record ID: S3525071 (You will need to refer to this number if you wish to correspond about your data.)
Locality: 94506, Danville, Contra Costa County, CA
Observation Date: FEB 15, 2008	Email: randall.whitney@prodigy.net
Start Time: 10:00 AM	Snow Depth: No snow was present
Total Birding Time: 45 minutes	Location Type: Yard
Party Size: 1Skill: excellentWeather: excellent	Habitat(s): deciduous woods coniferous woods suburban
Number of species: 15	All Reported: yes
Species Count Turkey Vulture 1 Red-tailed Hawk 2 Anna’s Hummingbird 3 Steller’s Jay 2 Western Scrub-Jay 5 American Crow 1 Chestnut-backed Chickadee 2 Oak Titmouse 2 Hermit Thrush 1 California Towhee 1 White-crowned Sparrow 4 Golden-crowned Sparrow 4 Dark-eyed Junco 7 House Finch 7 American Goldfinch 3

Yummy Suet!

“Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those peepers!”
“Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those eyes!”

(Pardon the eyes. The camera flash made the eyes glow!)

 

I make homemade suet for my backyard birds. Some days the birds don’t eat all of the suet. Tonight at dusk a new backyard friend couldn’t resist the suet and cleaned out the feeder!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is For Kids!

You’ll have more fun taking part in the Great Backyard Bird Count if you first learn about the birds you’re most likely to see. We have some fun ways for you to become familiar with birds.

Visit www.birdsource.org/gbbc/kids for coloring pictures, puzzles, and games to get your kids involved in a fun and educational hobby, birdwatching.

How to do the Great Backyard Bird Count
1. Plan to count birds for at least 15 minutes during February 15-18, 2008. You can count each day or just some of the days and you can count in different places. Just be sure to keep a separate list of birds for each day and each location.

2. For each type of bird you see, count the most you see at any one time. For example, maybe you see two chickadees when you start watching, then five chickadees a few minutes later. The number you put on your list for chickadees is five. Do not add two plus five. (That way you won’t accidentally count the same bird twice.)

3. Enter your results on the Great Backyard Bird Count web site! Then watch the maps as more and more people enter their reports.

2008 Great Backyard Bird Count

Great Backyard Bird Count http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc

This year’s 11th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, led by Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, will be held Presidents’ Day weekend, February 15–18, 2008. Anyone in the United States and Canada can count birds from wherever they are and enter their tallies online at www.birdcount.org. These reports create an exciting real-time picture of where the birds are across the continent and contribute valuable information for science and conservation.

Each tally helps us learn more about how our North American birds are doing, and what that says about the health and the future of our environment.

“The GBBC is a great way to engage friends, family, and children in observing nature in their own backyard, where they will discover that the outdoors is full of color, behavior, flight, sounds, and mystery,” said Janis Dickinson, Director of Citizen Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

People of all ages and experience levels are invited to take part wherever they are—at home, in schoolyards, at local parks or wildlife refuges, even counting birds on a balcony. Observers count the highest number of each species they see during at least 15 minutes on one or more of the count days. Then they enter their tallies on the Great Backyard Bird Count web site www.birdcount.org.

The web site provides helpful hints for identifying birds. Participants can compare results from their town or region with others, as checklists pour in from throughout the U.S. and Canada. They can also view bird photos taken by participants during the count and send in their own digital images for the online photo gallery and contest.

“Literally, there has never been a more detailed snapshot of a continental bird-distribution profile in history,” said John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Imagine scientists 250 years from now being able to compare these data with their own!”

Already, the count results show how the numbers of some birds species have changed in recent years.

For more information on how to participate, including identification tips, photos, bird sounds, maps, and information on over 500 bird species, visit www.birdcount.org.

Project FeederWatch Regions

 

If you travel across the continent from west to east, you will encounter different types of birds at different locations along your way. For example, you might see Western Scrub-Jays in California, Gray Jays in the Canadian Rockies, and Blue Jays in Virginia. Therefore, to interpret FeederWatch data in a meaningful way, the continent is divided into fifteen FeederWatch Regions. Each region includes a group of states and provinces that share similar geological and habitat features.

Find detailed information about your favorite backyard birds here http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/DataRetrieval/trendgraphs/index.html

Choose a bird from the drop down box and click “Go”. You’ll see graphs of the number of feeders visited and the average number of birds seen at one time for each of the FeederWatch regions.