Wednesday, March 23, 2011

More Species In Spring? Doubtful!

As our winter guests depart (the Yellow Rumped Warblers appear to the first out) and summer guests are on the radar (Catbirds soon) thoughts turn to how many species we'll be serving and viewing in the spring months. History says we'll be lucky if we see the same numbers. We average 22 BirdCam-photographed species in the first three months in the year and things taper off from there. We simply don't get migrants (with a one time exception of a Rose Breasted Grosbeak in '08), and some species drop away when natural foods become more common. But we also had an unusually strong February '11 with 24 species, so one can't be sure I won't hit a jackpot this season. All I am sure of is that food consumption will be going up at some point soon and topping out in May and June as nestlings are taken care of. Either way it will be interesting.

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