Golden Jubilee Carter County Bird Count

The 75th Annual Carter County Christmas Bird Count is in the record books.That’s a pretty good string of successful counts. We had 6 parties, 26 observers, and a new all-time high species count of 85. The 30-year running average is 72. While a bit chilly to start with by noon we had an uncommonly nice winter’s day for north east Tennessee. There was some snow still on the ground higher up but in town folks were out in t-shirts and flip-flops. This old guy was not one of them. The group I most often bird with will tell you I am quick to chill.

The count area is a 15-mile diameter centered on Wilbur Dam so that takes in almost all of Elizabethton, a long ways up Stoney Creek towards Shady Valley, and most of Watauga Lake to the east.

As it always is, some species just don’t want to show up. For example, for a 150-square mile area we had a total of 14 vultures. But we also hit every woodpecker and quite a few of the ducks. This is about the right time in the season for more ducks and we have been seeing more arrive either additional species or additional individuals. We had almost 300 bufflehead which would be a fraction of them for the larger five-county area.

The count produced many singles: white-fronted goose, Eur-Asian collared dove, barred owl, blue-headed vireo, red-breasted nuthatch (a real surprise), red-winged blackbird, catbird, brown thrasher, Eastern meadowlark (although upwards of 30 were spotted a week before outside the area). Bird watching is like that. From time to time in a given area it hit and miss and other times in the same area over a season all kinds of varieties come through.

Of course, in this small area were only thirteen-hundred starling.

I’ve noted here some of the more interesting finds (or misses) as noted by Rick Knight who is the compiler of record for the Herndon Chapter: Red-winged blackbird found 9 of last 25 years; Eastern meadowlark becoming very hard to find on this CBC; Brown-headed cowbird found 3 of last 25 years; Red-shouldered Hawk found 6 of last 25 years, uncommon in northeast Tennessee. Perhaps the most notable miss was American coot.

Our group (Bryan Stevens, Chris Soto, and Brenda Richards) collected 75 pipits in a corn field. Pipits have been on the count only three times in the last 25 years. That was my second pipit sighting of the calendar year. I’ve gone full years without seeing them. We stumbled upon a collard dove not half-a-mile as the crow flies from where they’d been seen several times in the summer. This count, they had none and we had one. The collared dove (pictured) lacks the pattern of a mourning dove and of course has the distinctive black collar around the back of the neck. We were excited, to say the least.

You can also expect some birds to be around that are relatively new to the area. Perhaps most notably is Bald eagle. Rick’s note is that we’ve seen Bald eagle in 20 of the last 25 years but only once before that. About 25 years ago was when the hacking program began on South Holston Lake and has paid off nicely. If you need further convincing of that, check out www.etsu.edu for the eagle cameras.

Also, Herndon hosts a website at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/HerndonBirdClub/info where more details are listed.
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