Isabella CBC Results
clever...@gmail.com
Isabella’s 44th CBC on Jan 3 saw records fall - none of them having to do with birds. People flocking to the count were responsible; 55 people counted in the field and 60 attended the post-count lasagna dinner at the Isabella CC, both records. Six residents also monitored their feeders. Peter Harris did an splendid job as the dinner MC and introduced a few innovations. Who knew that if you handed mild-mannered birders a little bell that they’d turn into despots. (You had to be there.) Fortunately, Peter signed a lifetime contract with a no-trade clause (read the fine print, Peter), so he’ll be back.
The birds were less cooperative than the plentiful birders. We managed to find 22 species, one above our average, but only tallied 670 individual birds, well off our average of 1061.
Most of the species we found numbered reasonably close to their count average. There were two exceptions: only two boreal chickadees were found compared to an average of 11; for the second consecutive year Canada (gray) jays tied their previous low of seven, compared to their count average of 41.
But those two species hardly account for the shortfall of almost 400 birds below the count’s average. What did? In a word: Finches. Seed eaters like purple finch, American goldfinch, evening and pine grosbeaks, pine siskin, common redpoll and white-winged and red crossbills were mostly scarce or absent. Only pine grosbeaks appeared in average numbers.
The others were no-shows because they rely on conifer cone and tree seed crops, especially paper birch. If seed production is adequate to the north in Canada, finches that nested there will stay put for the winter. But because these tree species will “skip” one of more years of seed or cone production, resident finches there will “irrupt” out of Canada into the US in those years. Apparently, food was abundant enough to the north this year that finches - other than pine grosbeaks - stayed home for the winter, leaving us lacking in the avian equivalent of “snowbirds” moving south.
The large turnout of birders, combined with the scarcity of finches, resulted in only 7 birds/party hour (an hour spent afield by a group of birders) being seen or heard, barely above our low of 5, and far short of the record 33 birds/party hour tallied in 1996. Indeed, if winter finches had been counted in average numbers, we would have landed very close to our count’s long-term average of 1061.
We did have a couple of nice finds – two tree sparrows and a white-throated sparrow, both for only the third time in the count’s history.
Since Steve Schon played such an integral role in our count before moving to pickleball heaven last year, I’d like to share a message he sent to you, including a bit of his trademark humor.
“To all my Isabella CBC comrades. (Comrades? He’s only been in California a few months and has already become a radical, leftwing communist.) I had my first California CBC on Dec 27th and it was fun. But even though my new birding buddies were great, the weather was warmer and the species count was a BIT higher, there is no way in hell that it will ever match the times and memories of my decades of surviving all those Isabella counts. We had a nice follow-up dinner that obviously paled in comparison to Mary's lasagna and the layered mint bar desserts! The leaders did a good job but could never match Wilson's dedication and hard work of putting together one of the greatest CBC's in the country. In closing carry on, stay warm and remember that the birds were great but it was people like you that made it all worthwhile. Not you people specifically, but people like you!
No refunds, no returns.
Schonie”
Steve doesn’t know this, but in case Peter breaks his contract and doesn’t appear next year, Isabella CBC Digital Labs has been developing the Schonie CBC-MC robot. They’re almost done but for one glitch having to do with Steve’s pickleball obsession. No matter how much data we mine, every time they fire him up this error message appears: “The game of pickleball and its name are nonsensical and must be human hallucinations, and explains where we large language models became infected with hallucinatory behavior.”
ALL ISABELLA CHRISTMAS COUNTS SINCE 1982 (n = 44)
| |||||||||||
Species | 01-03-26 | # Years Counted | Previous High Count | Previous Low Count | Average | ||||||
| 9 | 37 |
| 2 | |||||||
American goshawk | 1 | 8 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
American Bald eagle |
| 9 | 6 |
| <1 | ||||||
Eagle sp |
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Gyrfalcon |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Rough-legged hawk |
| 2 | 15 |
| <1 | ||||||
Spruce grouse | 2 | 24 | 22 |
| 2 | ||||||
Ruffed grouse | 13 | 37 | 63 |
| 6 | ||||||
Grouse sp. |
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Great horned owl |
| 3 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Northern hawk-owl |
| 6 | 5 |
| <1 | ||||||
Barred owl |
| 2 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Great gray owl |
| 12 | 11 |
| <1 | ||||||
Northern saw-whet owl |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Owl sp. |
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Belted kingfisher |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Red-bellied woodpecker |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Pileated woodpecker | 4 | 41 | 18 |
| 4 | ||||||
Hairy woodpecker | 16 | 44 | 46 | 2 | 18 | ||||||
Downy woodpecker | 55 | 44 | 152 | 4 | 52 | ||||||
Black-backed woodpecker | 6 | 36 | 18 |
| 4 | ||||||
Three-toed woodpecker |
| 6 | 3 |
| <1 | ||||||
Canada (gray) jay | 7 | 44 | 154 | 7 | 41 | ||||||
Blue jay | 69 | 44 | 157 | 11 | 47 | ||||||
Common raven | 45 | 44 | 147 | 14 | 67 | ||||||
American crow | 3 | 17 | 12 |
| 1 | ||||||
Black-capped chickadee | 257 | 4 | 717 | 62 | 259 | ||||||
Boreal chickadee | 2 | 41 | 48 |
| 11 | ||||||
White-breasted nuthatch | 2 | 37 | 15 |
| 3 | ||||||
Red-breasted nuthatch | 65 | 44 | 562 | 8 | 95 | ||||||
Brown creeper | 2 | 14 | 7 |
| <1 | ||||||
Golden-crowned kinglet |
| 6 | 5 |
| <1 | ||||||
Gray catbird |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Brown thrasher |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Bohemian waxwing |
| 5 | 200 |
| 7 | ||||||
Cedar waxwing |
| 2 | 17 |
| <1 | ||||||
Northern shrike |
| 21 | 5 |
| <1 | ||||||
Red-winged blackbird |
| 1 | 5 |
| <1 | ||||||
Brewer's blackbird |
| 1 | 2 |
| <1 | ||||||
Blackbird sp. |
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Common grackle |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Evening grosbeak |
| 23 | 370 |
| 28 | ||||||
Purple finch |
| 14 | 180 |
| 9 | ||||||
Pine grosbeak | 93 | 44 | 225 | 6 | 85 | ||||||
Common redpoll | 14 | 40 | 1480 |
| 199 | ||||||
Pine siskin |
| 29 | 192 |
| 23 | ||||||
American goldfinch |
| 23 | 243 |
| 29 | ||||||
Red crossbill | 2 | 32 | 133 |
| 25 | ||||||
White-winged crossbill | 9 | 26 | 342 |
| 25 | ||||||
Crossbill sp. |
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Dark-eyed junco |
| 9 | 3 |
| <1 | ||||||
American tree sparrow | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
White-throated sparrow | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| <1 | ||||||
Song sparrow |
| 1 | 1 |
| <1 | ||||||
Total Individual Birds | 670 |
| 2882 | 449 | 1061 | ||||||
Total Species | 22 |
| 30 | 15 | 21 | ||||||
Total Party Miles | 140.5 |
| 385.5 | 84 | 204 | ||||||
Total Party Hours | 91.25 |
| 126.5 | 31 | 74 | ||||||
Participants Afield | 55 |
| 51 | 10 | 30 | ||||||
Birds Seen/Party Hour | 7 |
| 33 | 5 | 16 | ||||||
Steve Wilson
Isabella CBC Compiler