Montauk CBC 2010...

Even with a new tripod, Rich resorts to old habits.

My day began at 3:00 a.m. when I left my house and met up with my teammate for the day, naturalist Rich Kelly. We took two vehicles into Montauk then used one car for our whirlwind coverage of our assigned route. We had a lot of ground to cover more so because our team was down to only the two of us for our sector.  Rich and I worked well together, each feeding off of our strengths and styles. A good mixture of  "ground and pound" approach coupled with good time management aided us well. While the weather was nice in the 30's, we had to work hard at getting our birds. Our persistence and diligence paid off and we ended up with a decent list. We had some assistance towards the end from Shai Mitra and Patricia Lindsay, but for the most part the list is made up of most of our birds. The birds in bold are those that were SAVES.  A save, is when a team finds a species that no other teams on the count had any record of it for the day.  We had a total of 4 saves. The details on the Montauk count are not yet available, but Rich who attended the compilation dinner indicated that the total count for Montauk was 129 species.

Total Species Seen By Our Team: 71

1. Snow Goose (Blue) - 1
2. Canada Goose - 330
3. Mute Swan - 5
4. American Black Duck - 2
5. Mallard - 184
6. Northern Shoveler - 2
7. Northern Pintail - 3
8. Redhead - 3
9. Ring-necked Duck - 4
10. Common Eider - 42
11. Surf Scoter - 21
12. White-winged Scoter - 33
13. Black Scoter - 52
14. Long-tailed Duck - 18
15. Bufflehead - 55
16. Common Goldeneye - 43
17. Hooded Merganser - 3
18. Red-breasted Merganser - 120
19. Ruddy Duck - 2
20. Wild Turkey - 1
21. Red-throated Loon - 34
22. Common Loon - 108
23. Pied-billed Grebe -2
24. Horned Grebe - 41
25. Red-necked Grebe - 3
26. Northern Gannet - 1
27. Double-crested Cormorant - 3
28. Great Cormorant - 4
29. Sharp-shinned Hawk - 1
30. Red-tailed Hawk - 5
31. American Coot - 7
32. Sanderling - 75
33. Purple Sandpiper - 7
34. Bonaparte's Gull - 25
35. Ring-billed Gull - 20
36. Herring Gull - 155
37. Iceland Gull - 1
38. Lesser Black-backed Gull -1
39. Great Black-backed Gull - 35
40. Razorbill - 23
41. Rock Pigeon - 97
42. Mourning Dove - 22
43. Great Horned Owl - 1
44. Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1
45. Downy Woodpecker - 1
46. Northern Flicker - 6
47. Blue Jay - 10
48. American Crow - 32
49. Black-capped Chickadee - 44
50. Tufted Titmouse - 7
51. White-breasted Nuthatch - 2
52. Carolina Wren - 13
53. Hermit Thrush - 3
54. American Robin - 2
55. Northern Mockingbird 12
56. Brown Thrasher - 1
57. European Starling - 210
58. Palm Warbler - 1
59. Eastern Towhee - 2
60. Field Sparrow - 2
61. Savannah Sparrow - 3
62. Fox Sparrow - 2
63. Song Sparrow - 70
64. Swamp Sparrow - 2
65. White-throated Sparrow - 47
66. Dark-eyed Junco - 3
67. Northern Cardinal - 20
68. Red-winged Blackbird - 9
69. House Finch - 2
70. American Goldfinch - 2
71. House Sparrow - 44

Total Sites Covered: 27

Tags: Birding, Christmas Bird Count, Montauk Long Island

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