The 13th Saugeen Shores Christmas Bird Count took place onJanuary 4, 2017 with 26 people participating plus 6 feeder watchers.
The weather was challenging and at the outset wedetermined to do a shortened day. This was a wise decision as throughout the morningwe experienced white out conditions, snow squalls, drifting snow and later inthe afternoon, closed highways. The westwind had speeds from 25 to 60 kilometres an hour. Snow depths were listed as 10 cm.Visibility ranged from fair to poor to nil. Lake Huron was wild with huge waves crashing into shore. Creeks andrivers inland were open to partially frozen. We found an all time low of 2606 individual birds; however,despite the weather, they represented 50 species which is slightly below average. Two species were new to the count.Tufted Titmouse were found at two separate feeder locations (Southampton and near Paisley) and an Iceland Gullwas tallied at the Southampton dump. This brings the cumulativetotal for the count to 102 species. AnOregon Junco was photographed at a feeder. Purple Finch, Northern Shrike andSnowy Owl were count week species. The challenging weather and the shortened day make itdifficult to identify trends. Participants benefited from knowing thelocations of bird feeders throughout the largely rural count area. Thank you to all the participants, some of whom traveleda distance. I certainly valued their time, effort and skills. Thanks, as well, to each of them for bravingthe challenging weather, visibility and road conditions. I’m glad everyone made it home safely before dark. Norah Toth Stewardship Grey Bruce, Piping Plover Committee Chair _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS including how to unsubscribe visit http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdssetup Posting guidelines can be found at http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdsguide Visit the OFO Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists
