These are the results of the 38th Woodhouse Christmas Bird Count held on Sunday December 15th, 2024. The Woodhouse CBC is centred 7 km east of Simcoe, at the crossroads of Highway 3 and Cockshutt Road at Renton, and roughly covers from Port Dover to Waterford and just west of Simcoe to east of Jarvis. 37 field birders covered the count area plus 11 feeder watchers.
Conditions were comfortable to start the day with temperatures above 0, light southeast winds (11-16 km/h), zero snow on the ground, and plenty of open water with little ice cover. Some light rain after lunch made for a quiet afternoon, but didn't affect the count to a huge degree. The mild temperatures leading up to the count meant waterfowl diversity and numbers were high, but we could have used some snow cover to bring more sparrows to the roadsides and feeders. The day resulted in an incredible 10 record high counts. Hardy insect eating birds are benefiting from our warming climate with wrens and kinglets being found in higher numbers than usual this year. Between the inaugural count in 1987 and 2004, Carolina Wren was never recorded in double digits. Numbers began to rise modestly, and now the counts for the last few years are 35, 16, 24, 26, and the new high this year of 46. This is just one interesting example of the power of doing these yearly counts and building a long-term data set alongside all the other Christmas Bird Counts done across North America and beyond. We tallied 88 species on the day, 1 more than the average of the last 10 years, and above the 38 year average of 83. No new species were added to the all-time count list, and I'm not aware of any additional count week species. A single White-winged Scoter is the first one since 1990, which sounds long overdue for a count on Lake Erie. Total Individuals: 22,105 (top 3 species were Canada Goose, Mallard, and Greater Scaup) Average over all 38 years = 24,688 Average for the last 10 years = 18,700 New Count Highs: 5 Wood Duck (3 several times) 49 Ruddy Duck (40 in 2023) 9 Merlin (6 in 2021) Even if a few wandering birds were double counted, this species does seem to be increasing) 5 Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (2 several times) 6 Pileated Woodpecker (5 in 2021) 46 Carolina Wren (25 in 2020) 16 Winter Wren (12 in 2019) 157 Golden-crowned Kinglet (79 in 2008) 3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet (ties high from 2006) 7 Hermit Thrush (4 in 2005) Other Notable Finds: 1 Double-crested Cormorant (infrequent) 1 Snow Goose (1st since 2015) 1 American Wigeon (2nd time in last 10 years) 2 Canvasback (2nd time in last 10 years) 1 White-winged Scoter (1st since 1990) 1 Red-shouldered Hawk (1st since 2016) 1 Gray Catbird (2nd time in last 10 years) Lowlights and Misses: 0 Northern Shrike (missed for 2nd time in last 10 years) 1 White-crowned Sparrow is unusually low 0 Red-winged Blackbird (missed for 2nd time in last 10 years) Below is the full species list: SPECIES Total Horned Grebe 11 Double-crested Cormorant 1 Great Blue Heron 10 Mute Swan 3 Trumpeter Swan 8 Tundra Swan 50 Canada Goose 7095 Cackling Goose 17 Snow Goose 1 Wood Duck 5 Mallard 1415 American Black Duck 141 Gadwall 32 American Wigeon 1 American Green-winged Teal 7 Canvasback 2 Redhead 1581 Ring-necked Duck 18 Greater Scaup 1714 Lesser Scaup 882 White-winged Scoter 1 Common Goldeneye 152 Bufflehead 199 Hooded Merganser 49 Common Merganser 283 Red-breasted Merganser 458 Ruddy Duck 49 Bald Eagle 12 Northern Harrier 10 Sharp-shinned Hawk 2 Cooper's Hawk 8 Red-shouldered Hawk 1 Red-tailed Hawk 67 Rough-legged Hawk 3 American Kestrel 13 Merlin 9 Wild Turkey 36 Bonaparte's Gull 153 Ring-billed Gull 541 Herring Gull 99 Great Black-backed Gull 4 Rock Pigeon 376 Mourning Dove 735 Eastern Screech-Owl 6 Great-horned Owl 1 Belted Kingfisher 6 Red-bellied Woodpecker 45 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 5 Downy Woodpecker 85 Hairy Woodpecker 23 Yellow-shafted Flicker 15 Pileated Woodpecker 6 Blue Jay 448 American Crow 529 Common Raven 8 Horned Lark 2 Black-capped Chickadee 502 Eastern Tufted Titmouse 4 Red-breasted Nuthatch 5 White-breasted Nuthatch 114 Brown Creeper 24 Carolina Wren 46 Winter Wren 16 Golden-crowned Kinglet 157 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 3 Eastern Bluebird 19 Hermit Thrush 7 American Robin 12 Gray Catbird 1 Northern Mockingbird 1 European Starling 681 Cedar Waxwing 6 American Tree Sparrow 446 Field Sparrow 2 Song Sparrow 32 Swamp Sparrow 36 White-throated Sparrow 62 White-crowned Sparrow 1 Slate-colored Junco 1649 Northern Cardinal 241 Rusty Blackbird 1 Common Grackle 2 Brown-headed Cowbird 47 Purple Finch 4 House Finch 86 Pine Siskin 2 American Goldfinch 185 House Sparrow 275 -- Ontbirds and Birdnews are moderated email Listservs provided by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) as a service to all birders in Ontario. Birdnews is reserved for announcements, location summaries, first of year reports, etc. To post a message on Birdnews, send an email to: birdnews@ontbirds.ca. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the Birdnews Moderators by email at birdn...@ofo.ca. Please review posting rules and guidelines at http://ofo.ca/site/content/listserv-guidelines To find out more about OFO, please visit our website at ofo.ca or Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists.
