This means that CARROLL takes first place from plucky little Belknap and Cheshire sneaks a bit ahead of Coos. The Cacklers in Rockingham don't change its position.
I've made the appropriate changes to the table at the end and converted it to a format that hopefully everyone can read (I heard that some people couldn't see the table, probably because of email settings). There's also an exciting new column with the average rank over the three years. Finally, I corrected a couple of places in the narrative where comparisons between counties weren't clear.
There's always next year Rob!
Pam
Greetings all!
Things were coming down to the wire a few days ago, with a handful of new county species coming in just under the wire on November 30, and now that I've taken a close look at both eBird and the instant-reply footage I'm prepared to announce a winner for the 2022 November County Challenge.....
BELKNAP!!!!!!!
The MVP award this year is shared by Rob Woodward and Iain MacLeod, the latter especially so for abandoning his home county of Carroll when it also had a shot at the title. The machinations of birders in positions of great power certainly add an additional level of excitement to the game! It was a close contest for much of the month (and there's a caveat, stay tuned), with Hillsborough making an early surge into second place that it held until the final week, but in the end the excitement was most definitely in the Lakes Region. In the middle of the pack, Grafton made a stunning move mid-month to pull ahead of Grafton for the third leg, but the coast simply had more birds in reserve to end decisively in fourth. A similar north-south battle ended up playing out between Coos and Cheshire slowly losing steam throughout the month to end up missing sixth place by only 0.001%. A similar dynamic played out between Sullivan and Merrimack, but despite a nice surge over the final weekend Sullivan squeaked ahead into ninth at the end. Poor Strafford seems never to have had much of a chance, despite the Roos's Goose that showed up on the very last day of the month.
Standings aside, some good birds were found all over the state, from the returning Barrow's Goldeneye in Errol to the Tropical Kingbird in Greenland. Other notable rarities (most unfortunately seen by one or a few birders) included Mountain Bluebird in Carroll, Townsend's Solitaire in Grafton, and Cave Swallow in Hillsborough. Rockingham of course had multiple species besides the kingbird, including Eurasian Wigeon, Rufous Hummingbird, Cattle Egret, Least Flycatcher, LeConte's Sparrow, and Canada Warbler.
November can be marked by the extremes of both fall and winter, with the latter producing the beginnings of the winter finch flight, a couple of late-migrating Rough-legged Hawks, and the season's first Snowy Owl. At the other end, lingerers included 14 species of warblers, a couple Baltimore Orioles and Barn Swallows, and the usual smattering of shorebirds and sparrows. There are certainly others (Black-billed Cuckoo in Coos!!) but I'll leave them to anyone who wants to explore eBird.
And speaking of eBird, time for the aforementioned caveat. One of the core rules for this game is that species need to be entered into eBird, but this November I opted to make a couple of exceptions. One was a Snow Goose reported as "waterfowl sp." in Carroll and another a Red-headed Woodpecker lingering from October in Coos (with notes that it was seen in November). These are included in the tallies below. Not included are a couple of species still awaiting review, specifically Sandhill Crane without details in Rockingham (another Rockingham record does not seem to have made it into eBird at all) and Cackling Geese in Carroll and Cheshire. If the latter are ultimately verified it would mean position flips with Belknap and Coos. THAT'S what I call a photo finish!
Before I leave you with the "final" standings I'd like to thank everyone for birding in November (I know, it can be SO hard!) and keeping this game alive (even if you didn't particularly care). I hear from lots of birders that they have fun with this each year, so since it takes minimal work on my part I'll happily keep it going - and maybe even experiment with a different scoring system before November 2023 rolls around.
Until then, Good Birding and Happy Holidays!
Pam Hunt
Final results in order of finishing:
County 2022 Rank 2022% #species Base# New Base 2020 Rank 2021 Rank Ave Rank
Carroll 1 72.7 104 143 148 3 4 2.7
Belknap 2 72.5 95 131 134 9 3 4.7
Hillsborough 3 68.7 112 163 166 4 2 3.0
Rockingham 4 67.3 177 263 269 8 7 6.3
Grafton 5 65.6 99 151 158 10 5 6.7
Cheshire 6 63.9 101 158 163 2 8 5.3
Coos 7 63.4 85 134 136 7 6 6.7
Sullivan 8 61.6 77 125 126 1 1 3.3
Merrimack 9 59.9 109 182 183 5 10 8.0
Strafford 10 57.5 104 181 184 6 9 8.3
