Christmas Bird Count 2023 (official count day was December 15, 2023)

Overall, this year's CBC (hosted by the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science) was pretty quiet. The air was still and it seemed like I could hear for miles around, but I seldom heard birds! Fortunately there wasn't too much snow, which made for easy travel compared to last year where there was already multiple feet of snow on the ground. Everyone was able to just walk around this year with sturdy boots. Parking was easy, too :)

I covered the south half of Washoe Meadows State Park in the morning. And then met with my friend, Maria, for an afternoon session through the Angora Burn area via the Gunmount Trail (Angora Creek/Lake Tahoe BLVD - Nez Perce FS Gate turnaround - exited via Wintoon FS Gate. Total hiking mileage was 7.05 miles over approximately 5 hours, with minimal driving for shuttling purposes in the burn area.

My total count (in no particular order):
• Mountain Chickadee - 31
• Steller's Jay - 4
• Mallard - 2
• Golden-crowned Kinglet - 7
• Red Crossbill - 4
• American Dipper - 2 (my highlight for the day)
• Raven - 1
• White-breasted Nuthatch - 8
• Red-breasted Nuthatch - 4
• Brown Creeper - 3
• Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon) - 6
• Bushtit - 6
• Red-tailed Hawk - 1
• Northern Flicker - 1

Updated 12/17/23 - Two additional species for the week (Williamson's Sapsucker and Hairy Woodpecker)

The unofficial species count that we determined during the follow-up dinner party last night was 78 unique species, which is within the normal species range for the Tahoe CBC. However, the overall numbers count was way low compared to past years. Nobody has any real insight as to why the numbers were so low this year. The weather has been very favorable, so that doesn't really seem to be a factor.

The two species highlights were the observations of one American Goshawk (Geoff H.) and one Sora (Will R.).

Updated 12/20/23 - Here's a YouTube video that I created about the day's experience titled "Birds of Lake Tahoe: Christmas Bird Count 2023 aka Participating in Citizen Science at Lake Tahoe!" ( https://youtu.be/Qc0hxiMEG8U )

Posted on 16 de dezembro de 2023, 03:06 PM by jaredmanninen