The Audubon Society’s annual Lake Leelanau Christmas bird count set a new record again this year with an all time high number of bird species, 69, spotted on count day in December.
“It was a really good year for Lake Leelanau and Traverse City (area),” said Kirk Waterstripe, who helped organize the count.
Bird count had 30 people participating, including five feederwatchers for the Lake Leelanau area that combined for 59.5 hours by car, on foot, at feeders and by canoe.
The weather also provided help in spotting birds as last year had sustained winds out of the east that led to the birds hunkering down.
In all, the group tallied 4,903 individuals of 69 species.
This breaks the old Lake Leelanau count record of 65 species.
Bird species Black Scoter and Hermit Thrush were spotted for the first time during the count.
The Hermit Thrush is a fairly common summer resident breeding bird, but for it to linger in the winter is kind of unheard of, according to Waterstripe.
“The birds are out there and maybe they aren’t paying attention to bird feeders because of fruit left on the tree,” Waterstripe said.
The bird count also set a record for robins with 297 tallied.
“Robbins are not just for the spring time anymore. Given the chance if there’s a ton of fruit out there still, so given the chance they will stick around if they can find food,” Waterstripe said. “I think that made the difference because Traverse City had a really good count too ... I think the mild winter and the nice weather, which means people are more inclined to get out there, and take the time we need to really find the birds.”
Another interesting note from the bird count included an influx of White Winged Crossbills that came down from farther north to feed on spruce and fir seeds. In Leland, 91 White winged Crossbills were counted.
This typically happens when food supplies are exhausted up north and “we seem to have a big flight of them just before the count,” Waterstripe said. “That was a really cool treat to have something that’s uncommon to begin with show up in big numbers like that.”
New high counts: Long-tailed Duck (168) Red-shouldered Hawk (5) Pileated Woodpecker (33) American Robin (297) Gray Catbird (2) White-winged Crossbill (91) Pine Siskin (231) Northern Cardinal (83)
