North American Migration Count, May 10, 1997

Cal Pomarius

After the very successful (151 species, 8783 individuals) Ottawa county portion of the 1996 North American Migration Count, I wrote an article attributing our success to numbers of counters and time spent in the field. In retrospect, I think we were simply quite lucky last year. Spring progressed at the "normal" rate, and we had a good fallout of migrants just prior to the count. By comparison, spring 1997 was much cooler than normal we had no noticeable migrant fall outs. Few spring migrants were moving through at the time of the count. In fact, some birds that should have moved far to the north or west were still in Ottawa county (i.e. Homed grebe, Wilson's phalarope, American pipit). Spring certainly arrived later in 1997 than in 1996.

Having said that, I must also say that 1997 still yielded a good North American Migration Count in Ottawa county. We saw 5566 individuals of 132 species, we spent 59.7 hours in the field, and the rain held off until the next day. We also saw 16 species that were new for the count. See the list later in this article.

One of the duties of a North American Migration Count county compiler is to monitor and report weather conditions on the day of the count. As I mentioned earlier, spring 1997 was much cooler than normal. Looking back through my records confirms this, at least for our count days. Average low temperature for our count day prior to 1997 was 49.5 degrees Fahrenheit, while the high was 69.5 degrees. This year's low and high, respectively, were 37 and 47 degrees, certainly cooler than average.

While the cool weather may have been less than ideal for the counters, it didn't seem to be a problem for Red-winged blackbirds. After one year in second place, the Red-winged regained the #1 spot as most-numerous bird seen with 932 individuals. Coming in second was European starling at 343, closely followed by American robin at 337 and Tree swallow at 332. Fifth was Mallard at 287, and Double-crested cormorant was sixth at 216. Seventh was Canada goose at 184, followed by last year's #1 Ring-billed gull at 177. Rounding out the top ten were Common grackle at 164, and American goldfinch at 137. All told there were 14 species of which we saw at least 100 individuals, and another 11 of which we saw at least 50. Also, there were 19 species for which we saw only one individual. Click here for the complete data for 1995 - 1998

Before listing the birds seen on this year's count, I'd like to thank the following counters for their time and effort:

Last Update: 04/06/08

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