Looking back at 2016 birding, my standout months this year were January thru April and the months of August and September. Unlike the current uninteresting winter, January and February 2016 had more variety with overwintering birds during those relatively warm months. Like the warm spring of 2012 following that warm winter, waterfowl numbers were outstanding this past spring with personal early arrival dates for some species including my first February Greater White-fronted Geese. For the 2nd consecutive year May was a rather mundane month. It was still great as all Mays are. Again like the warm spring of 2012, the weather was apparently too nice and a lot of migrants seemed to overfly my local area straight to their breeding grounds. During the spring I counted a total of 1223 warbler. This is a decrease of 26% compared to my 2015 spring total with a similar time/distance in the field covered during the two years. The decrease is even greater when comparing the springs of 2013 and 2014 to 2016. My warbler totals during the spring of 2016 saw a decline of 66% compared to spring 2014 and a decline of 59% compared to spring 2013. The good news is that the decline compared to spring 2012 is only 5%. The summer months were solid with all expected species present, but nothing really stood out to me. Shorebirding was better during the summer than 2015, but habitat was still limited compared to the outstanding shorebird summers of 2012-2014. Shorebirds have always been a secondary bird interest for me with my peak interest in them occurring during the summer months as a bit of a filler between passerine migration. Both August and September were outstanding warbler months, as they have always been much more reliable than May over the years. I counted a total of 2362 warbler during the fall which is a decrease of 13% compared to fall 2015. Most of that decrease can be blamed on the decrease in Yellow-rumped Warbler this fall compared to last fall even though this fall's number was above average. Otherwise this fall's warbler total was higher than any other fall before 2015 with an 8% increase compared to 2014 and an increase of 32% compared to 2013. Once I saw that birds were not lingering nearly as much beyond mid-October unlike 2015, I did not spend as much time in the field as the year before. So for me the end of the year was rather uninteresting . Over time I have found that I don't enjoy birding by car as much, so I have cut down on the amount of time spent birding rural areas of Carver County which did cut down on the chances of seeing some species this past year. The majority of my time in 2016 was spent at either Rapids Lake, Carver Park, or the arboretum as I don't have to spend much time driving to those areas. 2016 had the potential to be a higher than average species year for me in Carver County, but several usual misses( several misses likely would have been seen if I had spent more time in rural areas of the county) left my year list pretty much right at the average. Some relatively common species that I did not see in 2016 were Red-breasted Merganser, Horned Grebe, Black Tern, Forster's Tern, Cape May Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, and Western Meadowlark. My bird of the year goes to my only Black-throated Blue Warbler, a late September male at Carver Park Reserve. My usual warbler totals for the year are below.
Warbler total counts (spring // fall) Ovenbird 40 // 78(new high fall total) Louisiana Waterthrush 1 // 0 Northern Waterthrush 20 // 49 Blue-winged Warbler 77(new high spring total) // 23(new high fall total) Golden-winged Warbler 9 // 55(new high fall total) Brewster's Warbler 1 // 2 Tennessee Warbler 88 // 221 Orange-crowned Warbler 6 // 73 Nashville Warbler 67 // 239 Northern Parula 2 // 13(new high fall total) Yellow Warbler 285 // 21 Chestnut-sided Warbler 9 // 139(compares to my 2015 high fall total of 144) Magnolia Warbler 23 // 91(new high fall total) Cape May Warbler 0 // 0 (didn't even have a glancing view of a possible bird) Black-throated Green Warbler 11 // 13 Yellow-rumped Warbler 158 // 459 Blackburnian Warbler 12 // 50(new high fall total) Yellow-throated Warbler 1 // 0 Pine Warbler 0 // 2 Black-throated Blue Warbler 0 // 1 Palm Warbler 23 // 35 Bay-breasted Warbler 1 // 22(new high fall total) Blackpoll Warbler 10 // 10(new high fall total) Cerulean Warbler 0 // 0 Black-and-White Warbler 27 // 110(new high fall total) American Redstart 144 // 294 Prothonotary Warbler 29(new high spring total) // 0 (species appeared to depart breeding grounds early combined with flooding of Rapids Lake throughout the late summer and fall likely led to me not seeing any during the fall) Connecticut Warbler 1 // 1 Mourning Warbler 6 // 12 Common Yellowthroat 149 // 247 Wilson's Warbler 18 // 48 Canada Warbler 6 // 54(new high fall total) Select other species counts(spring // fall) Olive-sided Flycatcher 1 // 14 Yellow-bellied Flycatcher 1 // 1 Alder Flycatcher 4 // 10 Willow Flycatcher 8 // 3 Blue-headed Vireo 10 // 15 Philadelphia Vireo 1 // 13 Veery 3 // 1 Gray-cheeked Thrush 4 // 5 Swainson's Thrush 10 // 23 Hermit Thrush 28 // 21 Wood Thrush 12 // 0 Lincoln's Sparrow 3 // 51 Harris's Sparrow 0 // 12 White-crowned Sparrow 3 // 12 John Cyrus ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
