The Commonest Three

Things are slow out there this week, so I'm doing more looking back than out, as it were. Being so slow, we're certainly down to the hardest core species. True? Actually, not quite. This week my most frequently seen birds are Mourning Doves, Northern Cardinals, and House Finches. But these are not all the most common birds I've recorded since BirdCam fired up in 2007. No surprise that the House Finches show up the most: photographed on 379 days out of the 860 the camera operated (44% of the time.) They are persistent gluttons, after all. The #2 bird here is the Carolina Wren, shot on 343 days (40%) and this is a function of their diverse diet---seeds and suet. Our #3 is the Carolina Chickadee with 33% of the days BirdCam ran. After that things drop off a good deal. Northern Cardinal shows up at #4 (276 days), followed in order by Tufted Titmouse (219), Eastern Bluebird (210), and Red Bellied Woodpecker (199.) All of these birds are perennials, but the Bluebirds lose ground by dint of their late summer absences as discussed yesterday. The surprise in the data? Even with all of the changes in feeders and locations in time, I would have expected the Wrens to be an easy #1 just based on their ubiquitousness. We shall see if that changes any over time. For now the Wren-Finch contest looks like a nip-and-tucker.