We did our FeederWatch duties this past weekend and counted a total of 6 species. The only true winter birds were a small flock of 4 Juncos that appeared at the last possible moment. The rest were usual yard birds. This did not alarm us because our experience has been that at this time of year the warm-weather migrants have left and the winter migrants have not yet arrived.
I checked my journals and found that in 2001 on these same dates we had 24 species at or near the feeders. And a total of 99 individual birds. The 24 species is still the high species count for our yard. I do not draw any conclusions from this comparison, except that the comparison is striking. A number of our listserv correspondents have `noticed a lot fewer feeder birds this Fall and the cause is certainly something to speculate about. Happy speculation. Bill McAneny, Trumansburg -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
