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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Superbowl of Birding XI: RESULTS

Looking for Short-eared Owls at dusk
On January 25, for the sixth consecutive year, the North Branch Nature Center represented Vermont in the Superbowl of Birding! Our team, the Chocolate-headed Cowbirds (with sprinkles), scoured Essex County, MA, for every bird we could find.  A biting and blustery wind didn't slow us down!  Here are some of our highlights:

 - 4 Snowy Owls, including one owl dive-bombing another in flight!
 - Short-eared Owls hunting in the distance at dusk. 
 - A Red-headed Woodpecker in a residential area of Ipswich.
 - Pacific Loon off the coast at Plum Island.
 - A Eurasian Wigeon in Black Rock Creek at Salisbury Beach State Reservation.
 - Black Guillimot close to shore in Gloucester.
 - Calm weather at Andrew's Point, with Harlequin Ducks close to shore.

In the Superbowl of Birding, each species is assigned a point-value based on how easy or difficult it is to find.  Easy birds like chickadees are worth 1 point, and hard birds like Dovekie are worth 5.  Even some of the 1-point birds are absent from Vermont, so we enjoyed both the common birds as well as the rare.  Our total of 69 species and 128 points broke our previous record, setting a new personal best.  The complete checklist from the trip is shown below:

1 point (plain text)
2 points (bold)
3 POINTS (BOLD, CAPS)
4 POINTS (BOLD, CAPS, ITALICS)
5 POINTS (BOLD, CAPS, ITALICS, UNDERLINED)


Canada Goose Northern Gannet  NORTHERN FLICKER
Gadwall Great Cormorant Blue Jay
EURASIAN WIGEON Bald Eagle American Crow
AMERICAN WIGEON Northern Harrier COMMON RAVEN
American Black Duck COOPER'S HAWK  Horned Lark
Mallard Red-tailed Hawk Black-capped Chickadee
RING-NECKED DUCK ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK Tufted Titmouse
Greater Scaup  SANDERLING White-breasted Nuthatch
Common Eider Purple Sandpiper Carolina Wren
Harlequin Duck Ring-billed Gull American Robin
Surf Scoter Herring Gull Northern Mockingbird
White-winged Scoter Iceland Gull  European Starling
Black Scoter GLAUCOUS GULL LAPLAND LONGSPUR
Long-tailed Duck Great Black-backed Gull SNOW BUNTING
Bufflehead RAZORBILL American Tree Sparrow
Common Goldeneye Black Guillemot SAVANNAH SPARROW
Hooded Merganser  Rock Pigeon Song Sparrow
Common Merganser Mourning Dove White-throated Sparrow
Red-breasted Merganser SNOWY OWL Dark-eyed Junco
RUDDY DUCK  SHORT-EARED OWL Northern Cardinal
PACIFIC LOON RED-HEADED W..DPECKER House Finch
Common Loon RED-BELLIED W..DPECKER American Goldfinch
Horned Grebe Downy Woodpecker House Sparrow

1 comment:

  1. AWESOME Birding :) I really missed it this year! Good job on beating our previous record!!

    ReplyDelete