Sunday was brrr-cold and not a little breezy. Rather than stay under comfort of cover, I layered-up and joined the Portland Audubon for the Area 3 bird count. It’s my fourth year doing the count, and third year walking First Addition as the count leader.

This year I was joined by two new people and a returning volunteer. We had a good time, despite the cold. And I am grateful to the new folks who, being gadget-heads, brought along hand warmers. The kind made out of some kind of iron filings in a little paper mesh bad.

They helped! Otherwise, yikes. I think two pairs of gloves would not have been enough.

Here’s the overall statistics:

• 7 1/2 hours (not including a lunch break, nor time at Peet’s before to organize or after to tally the counts from the different groups)
• 4 1/2 miles
• 813 individual birds (plus 2 I couldn’t identify*) (That’s 108 birds an hour, or 203 per person!)
• 28 species

The details:

• 131 Cackling/Canada sp.
• 1 Cooper’s Hawk
• 1 Red-tailed Hawk
• 4 Mourning Dove
• 14 Anna’s Hummingbird
• 2 Red-breasted Sapsucker
• 6 Northern Flicker
• 32 Steller’s Jay
• 5 Western Scrub Jay
• 59 American Crow
• 113 Black-capped Chickadee
• 10 Chestnut-sided Chickadee
• 43 Bushtit
• 14 Red-breasted Nuthatch
• 2 Brown Creeper
• 4 Bewick’s Wren
• 7 Golden-crowned Kinglet
• 42 American Robin
• 44 Varied Thrush
• 3 Townsend’s Warbler
• 16 Spotted Towhee
• 54 Song Sparrow
• 126 Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon)
• 40 House Finch
• 8 Lesser Goldfinch
• 1 American Goldfinch
• 5 Evening Grosbeak

The surprises:

• No House Sparrows, even though we were in an urban/residential area. Not even in the Safeway parking lot.
• No Golden-crowned Sparrows. They are all over my yard, not that many miles away.
• Scads. I mean Scads of Thrush. Flocks of them. More numbers than Robins.
• The Evening Grosbeaks are an uncommon sighting this time of year. Yay!
• I spotted the Sapsuckers! One by following his dull thumping sound; the other by simply looking up and seeing what must have been a bill in a bushy tree silhouette.
• I spotted the Brown Creeper, and ID-ed them, too. The new folks had never seen them before! Yay!
• I also spotted and ID-ed the Kinglets. :-)
• No Downy, Hairy or Pileated Peckerwoods. Bah.
• No Owls. Not even the Screech Owl was showing himself at his usual tree.
• Not a single gull sp. overhead. Not one.
• Not a duck overhead, either. Not one.

The numbers overall will be down this year. Some of it is clearly weather-related. The Lake water was down, too. That will be a big influence on numbers. But the Lake crew got a couple of “unusual” sightings. And that is nice for them/us.

For the entire Area 3 of Portland (Lake Oswego) the notables are:

• 1 Western Sandpiper  (identification provisionally accepted – unusual bird documentation submitted)
• 1 Glaucous Gull (identification provisionally accepted – unusual bird documentation submitted)
• 1 Green Heron
• 2 Barred Owls
• 5 Evening Grosbeaks
• 3 Bald Eagles
• 3 Wilson’s Snipe
• 40 Anna’s Hummingbirds
• 6 Hairy Woodpeckers
• 4 Pileated Woodpeckers
• 87 Chestnut-backed Chickadees
• 27 Townsend’s Warblers

And from our Area leader, these notes:

Portland CBC Species total = now 124 species (2 additional species seen yesterday have been added)

Best Bird for the overall count = Black Scoter

Lake Oswego CBC Species total = 71 species

LO Unusual Bird Sightings provisionally accepted = Western Sandpiper and Glaucous Gull.

* * *

No pictures from the day. My fingers weren’t working very well. But my eyes had a grand time. My ears, too, when they weren’t frozen solid! I’ve linked to “All About Birds” from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Love this site!

* I think they could have been a Hermit Thrush and a Warbler of some sort. I need to take a class or two! I have a sort-of good visual memory (not quite photographic, but pretty good) and I should try sketching them before I forget. How about this for an app!?: One could take pieces of bird photos and put them together like police sketches! I’d buy the app!

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4. stones; a river: 2