Posted by Bill Boeringer on January 03, 2018 at 21:25:56
The Kendall CBC was run on December 23, 2017. Preliminary results (we still do not have two team reports) indicate that the CBC had a respectable 134 “countable” species, with another 9 exotics, and one Count Week only bird (Limpkin). We tallied 3 new species for the count—White-tailed Kite, Barred Owl, and White-winged Scoter (pending acceptance of reports by the State Compiler). Highlights included 3 Nashville Warblers, 2 Wilson’s Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, Least Flycatcher, and 2 Mangrove Cuckoos. Extra effort by a number of observers pre-dawn (it is funny to run into another birder at 0530 in a very dark local park!) resulted in a great haul of nightjars and owls—in addition to the Barred Owl above, we had 22 Eastern Screech-Owls (our best year ever), 4 Great Horned Owls, 4 Burrowing Owls, and a Barn Owl, plus 5 Eastern Whip-poor-wills, and one each Chuck-will’s-widow and Lesser Nighthawk. As of this writing, there were a couple of big misses, including an inexplicable whiff on Common Myna! Was anyone shopping at Walmart that afternoon? We had fewer feeder/yard reports than usual, which is a shame, as there were at least 2 species that we obtained solely through these feeder/yard reports (House Finch and Common Hill Myna). Among neotropical migrants, we set an all-time best on Yellow-throated Vireos (15), a species we generally have far more of than anywhere else in the country. 55 Blue-headed Vireos and 8 Baltimore Orioles were also records. Warbler numbers were very good as well, as we continue to set the national pace in both number of species and individuals. As expected, duck and shorebird numbers were very low, as there seems to be almost no good habitat left in the area. Aside from ubiquitous Muscovies and Egyptian Geese, we had a total of only 20 individual dabbling ducks, of 3 species (feral Mallard, Mottled, and Blue-winged Teal). Once all results are tabulated, I will post the final results.