Wandering Aimlessly
Winter Bird News
by Phil Burkhouse
December 20th, seventeen hardy birders hit the fields and forests in our annual Emporium Christmas Bird Count. Another ten birders monitored feeders with a total of thirteen hours (4 a.m. to 5 p.m.) being logged by participants. The nocturnal birding was for owls, and temperatures ranged from 21 degrees to a high of 38 degrees with minimal winds and no snow cover.
This year’s count was fairly uneventful with large flocks of migratory northern birds absent due to our open winter. One day of birding yielded forty-nine different species with a total of 2,272 individual birds being seen. The most numerous species was the little gray and white snow bird known as the dark-eyed junco. This year we tallied 478 juncos.