Christmas Bird Count

 

Crazy amount of water in the creek this winter and no ice.

On Sunday we did the Christmas Bird Count on our regular route down the upper creek valley. The weather was fabulous, the first sunny day we've had in weeks.

In the first 1/2 hour we saw 26 common goldeneye. That was a lot.

Some of the 26

But after that the birding went downhill.  There was very little activity.  We saw a few chickadees, the usual crows and ravens, mallards, an eagle, two red-tailed hawks.

We got to check out the repairs to the road by the sewage lagoons, which is usually out of bounds due to construction and slope instability.

New bridge by the sewage lagoons.

The sewage lagoons are usually fenced in but we were able to walk all around them.  Often there can be a hundred ducks in the lagoons but you have to climb up a hill to see in.  This year access was easy but thee were only 6 mallards in the ponds because the creek isn't frozen.

On the way out we climbed up a very steep tail.  It was horribly muddy and our mud-caked shoes had no traction.  I slipped and fell and got covered in mud.  At one point I was crawling on my knees.

Back at home I watched our feeder while Leo did another route in town where he got a photo of the first Anna's hummingbird ever seen on bird count day.

We've had a white-throated sparrow at our feeder for several weeks, one of two on the count.