Christmas Bird Count 2011 in Northfield

This was the view from the passenger seat at just after 8 a.m. on Saturday, December 17, as my little Christmas Bird Count group set off to spend the morning slowly driving (and occasionally walking) our assigned area, which included the back roads southeast of Northfield as well as the southeast section of town. Other groups covered other sections of the area.

We covered 29 miles by car and about half a mile on foot (mostly on the footpaths near ). It was a pretty morning, with last night's dusting of snow still fresh on the fields and trees, but it was relatively slow morning for birding. While we had a few exciting moments, things were generally pretty quiet. Over the course of 3.5 hours we spotted or identified by sound approximately:

• 80 European starlings in a single group
• 51 house finches (about 40 in a single flock)
• 50 mallards flying overhead
• 26 American crows
• 21 house sparrows
• 17 black-capped chickadees
• 9 mourning doves (7 in one small backyard tree visible from a footpath)
• 7 blue jays 
• 7 wild turkeys
• 6 dark-eyed juncos
• 5 American robins
• 4 downy woodpeckers
• 3 American goldfinches
• 3 northern cardinals
• 3 red-tailed hawks
• 2 northern shrikes (one in town, near the ponds off Jefferson Parkway near Prairie St. -- an exciting "spot")
• 1 red-bellied woodpecker
• 1 white-breasted nuthatch

There were also a few pigeons, which are officially called rock pigeons these days.

Dan and Erika Tallman were the Northfield-area coordinators this year and hosted the pre-Count breakfast and the post-Count lunch. It's always fun to sit around the table with other bird-minded Northfielders, and some who come from elsewhere to participate because their home regions don't have a count.

We joined in the Christmas Bird Count the previous two years as well, and I blogged about both outings. In 2009 I saw my first horned larks and provided more general background about the Christmas Bird Count, and in 2010 I saw my first northern shrike and wrote about the frustration of unofficial turkeys -- turkeys that were on the wrong side of the road along our area boundary and so could not be officially counted.