If, in my note of 20 Feb, I suggested that winter 2025-2026 hadn't been too bad, or that the worst was past, Mother Nature always has the last word.
The Block Island Presidents Day Count was conducted by seven participants on 2 March 2026. This marks the 31st consecutive iteration of this late winter, CBC-style bird survey on Block Island and its nearshore waters and completes the 30th consecutive full survey cycle (November, December, and February/March). As in the case of the 1 March 2003 PDC, winter storms pushed back the date of the count, but the blizzard of 23 February 2026 was one of the most severe ever recorded on Block Island. The snowfall of ca. 30 inches and hurricane-force winds of this epic bomb cyclone snapped trees, flattened bushes, and transformed the island’s kettle hole thickets from damp, food-rich refuges into frozen, snow-filled deserts. Furthermore, an earlier major storm in late January had already deposited heavy accumulations of snow and was followed immediately by a prolonged period of unusually cold temperatures, making this winter by far the harshest locally since the winter of 2014-2015. Not surprisingly, bird abundance was dramatically affected. Large, generalist waterfowl such as Canada Goose, Mallard, and Greater Scaup were recorded at levels 200-600% above their February norms, and most of the other species recorded at higher-than-average abundance were also waterfowl, including counts of 21 Gadwall, 37 American Wigeon, and a drake Eurasian Wigeon (continuing from December). In contrast, species sensitive to severe conditions, such as Pied-billed Grebe, American Coot, Northern Gannet, Double-crested Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Belted Kingfisher, and Winter and Marsh Wrens, were absent. The persistence of 12 Ruddy Ducks was an exception to this generalization. Not necessarily attributable to weather but deserving mention here was an exceptionally low count of 39 Red-breasted Mergansers. Landbird diversity and abundance were exceptionally low. Whereas an average of 36 such species have been detected on the PDCs, just 29 were found this year, matching the previous minimum, recorded in February 1997. Similarly, we counted just 39 individual landbirds per party-mile on foot, by far the lowest value of this metric ever recorded on any PDC, or any prior winter count (the previous low was 53 in February 2010). To put this in context, we had recorded 112 landbirds per mile on foot on the preceding CBC, on 18 December 2025, implying that roughly two-thirds of the landbirds present in December were lost over the next ten weeks. Among the most generally abundant species inhabiting Block Island’s thickets and yards, Black-capped Chickadee and Northern Cardinal fared relatively well, with losses of just 24% and 17%, respectively. In contrast, House Finch, White-throated Sparrow, and Song Sparrow suffered losses of 67%, 64%, and 66%, respectively, very close to the overall value for landbird species collectively. Less numerous species also diminished, with three Gray Catbirds, one Brown Thrasher, and three Hermit Thrushes each 50-90% below December values and again in line with the overall pattern of landbird diminution. American Goldfinch, Eastern Towhee, and Swamp Sparrow were absent on the PDC, following counts of 6, 15, and 11 in December, but these misses were not too surprising because each of these species had been missed on two prior PDCs. But for some species, the losses were more notable. Yellow-shafted Flicker and Myrtle Warbler were each missed entirely for the first time ever across the 92 winter counts, 100% losses from counts of 14 and 256 in December. Although some amount of dispersal is conceivable for these relatively mobile species, mortality is the only reasonable explanation for the near-extirpation of Carolina Wrens, only eight of which were found—a grievous loss of 96% of the 186 tallied on the CBC. This species’ oft-cited vulnerability to severe winter weather has been observed so infrequently in recent decades (at least in southern New England and Long Island) that their near-absence on this PDC was viscerally alarming, and I found myself alternately speeding up and slowing down on my 9.6-mile route, disbelieving my eyes and ears. The only comparable mortality in the three decades for which quantitative data are available occurred in 2014-2015, when just 10 Carolina Wrens were found on the PDC, following a count of 121 on the preceding CBC, a loss of 92%. Overall, we have found that this species diminishes by 24% on average between the CBC and the PDC (-19% on average, if the two catastrophic winters are excluded). Following the 2014-2015 season, abundance rebounded quickly, increasing from 26 in December 2015 to 80, 136, 170, 210, and 304 over the next five CBCs. The count of 304 in December 2020 was the highest ever, and we've regarded the somewhat lower counts since then as likely related to changes in habitat on the island rather than late winter mortality—until now. It remains to be seen how well the survivors of the winter of 2025-2026 will fare. Shai Mitra Bay Shore, NY ________________________________ From: Shaibal Mitra <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2026 12:41 PM To: NYSBIRDS-L <[email protected]> Subject: Recent Bird Mortality Like everyone online, I’ve been hearing a lot about bird mortality lately. Although this is an expected consequence of the prolonged severe cold and heavy snow-cover we’ve been experiencing, a lot of folks have been expressing concerns that avian flu might be involved too, at least as a contributing factor. Seeing and hearing about dead birds is naturally upsetting, but I urge birders to focus attention and energy on things we can feasibly accomplish, rather than just amplify each other’s distress. Regarding avian influenza, the most we can do is to seek objective data, evaluate it quantitatively, but most importantly, to advocate for evidence-based local, state, and federal regulation of agricultural practices that potentially interact with virus transmission in natural populations of wild birds—not an easy job, and not one to be accomplished quickly or decisively. Documenting and recording dead birds is valuable also, but again with the caveat that a quantitative perspective is essential to gain anything useful from the exercise. Every bird dies once in its life, so it is an irony that the vastly increased winter populations of many species (consider that Canada Goose didn’t over-winter abundantly in the Northeast until relatively recently) implies the eventual deaths of all those additional birds. And this “eventual” mortality can’t be expected to play out gently; we know from experience and from general principle that it will unfold in highly variable and irregular ways, just as severe winter weather and pathogen outbreaks are themselves highly variable and unpredictable in timing and intensity. More useful than counting dead birds would be counting living birds. For instance, we recently completed the NYSOA January Waterfowl Count. Although this was prior to the worst of the severe weather, the data ought still to inform whether catastrophic disease mortality was happening as of late January, and my recollection is that counts during that survey, and during the Christmas Bird Counts a month earlier, were not in any way alarmingly low. And any of us is free to go out now and replicate any part of the effort employed in those earlier surveys. Thirty years ago, a group of purposeful birders began replicating the Block Island CBC in November and again in February for just this purpose, and many people were surprised to learn that Gray Catbirds, Hermit Thrushes, and Swamp Sparrows survived from December to February at rates only slightly lower than did White-throated and Song Sparrows. Clearly, a part of the perception of scarcity in late winter is driven by changes in the behavior of birders, yet our birding effort is the thing that is most completely within our control. Winter weather is highly variable in the Northeast. Among the many, many mild and snowless winters of recent decades, there have also been unusually severe ones. Many of us remember (or should remember) how much worse the winter of 2014-2015 was than what we have just experienced this year. It’s worth re-visiting the Kingbird Regional Reports for that season (see links to the June 2015 issue and to that winter’s Wikipedia page, below). Terrible as it was, we went out and counted birds on the Block Island Presidents Day Count on 23 Feb 2015, and we found 75 species, 33 landbird species, and 72 landbirds/foot-mile, all predictably depressed (but only slightly so) from the 30-year average values of 80, 36, and 81. The Kingbird, Volume 65, Number 2, June 2015: https://nybirds.org/KB_IssuesArchive/y2015v65n2.pdf 2014-2015 North American Winter (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014%E2%80%9315_North_American_winter Going further back, there were several exceptionally severe winters in the late 70s and early 80s (Nantucket Sound froze over!). One of the most memorable weather events in my lifetime was the Great Blizzard of 6-7 February 1978 (which followed another blizzard in late January, as I remember). This storm produced more than 30 inches of snow in southern Rhode Island (more than 40 inches in northern RI) and similarly huge amounts on Long Island. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978 As a reality check to what we are experiencing today, check out the photos in that article to see the congenial relationship between the National Guard and the local people (as well as the conspicuous tobacco use!) in Boston in the aftermath of that storm. Circling back to things we can do, purposeful birding produces results of great potential value—but especially if they are organized, interpreted, and published, rather than dispersed among the dross and chaff clogging our digital environment. Consider contributing to the Kingbird Regional Reports, or other similar, curated endeavors. Shai Mitra Bay Shore, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: Visit: http://LISTS.cornell.edu for more information Posting Address: [email protected] Archives: The Mail Archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html Sightings: Please submit your observations to eBird at http://www.ebird.org --
