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Kinglets -- a Parting Shot



Birders:
    As I brought up the matter of winter mortality of kinglets and other
passerines due to the severe weather in the Triangle this winter, I have
watched as some folks have "corroborated" this concern, and others have
questioned this concern. Just as in a published paper, after allowing
comments from others, I wish a final parting shot.

I have birded the Traingle area for 35 years and am a native of the
area. I bird this area practically every week. I also participate in
Christmas counts across the eastern half of the state. I have a good
feel when populations of birds are down on a "major scale". I failed to
note earlier that perhaps the most striking case of winter mortality was
one (or more than once) heavy snowstorm along the NC coast, along with
record cold temps that actually had the Pamlico Sound frozen over,
around Christmas!.  I participated on several CBC's in these areas a few
days after this brutal weather. I recall finding very few kinglets,
marsh sparrows, wrens, Palm Warblers, etc. on those counts.  In fact,
there was a lot of mortality of Brown Pelicans, which I would have
thought would have moved south to evade the weather (folks actually saw
the many dead pelicans; the songbirds normally are not found dead
because they would likely perish in out of the way places like in
thickets where their small bodies would be hard to spot).

I was the Regional Editor of American Birds at that time, and there was
no indication from birders in SC or GA that there was a movement of
songbirds southward into their areas right after the severe weather.
This just does not happen with kinglets and many other songbirds -- they
are "in for the winter" (banding results show that many or most of these
species tend to return to winter where they wintered the year before).

Some folks questioning my comments live in areas ouside the Triangle, or
in areas where the weather was not way out of the norm. CBC data from
Florida regarding kinglets this winter has nothing to do with mortality
of NC kinglets in late January and early February.  I was glad to see
Backyard Bird Count data, taken from Febraury after the bout of severe
weather, seem to show that despite more observers, kinglets were
seemingly down. This may have been over the entire state, and if so, I
bet the data from just the eastern Piedmont would be more striking. As
for the mountains of NC, I suppose the weather there this winter was not
way out of line with the norm and thus there wasn't the obvious drop-off
of kinglets.

If folks want to question whether we in the Traingle lost as many as
80-90% of the kinglets, fine. But what did happen was: we lost a lot of
kinglets to severe weather, and presumably a good number of other
songbirds as well. It will be interesting to see how well these species
recover over the summer on the breeding grounds up north, and what
percentage we get back next fall.

Harry LeGrand

--
Harry E. LeGrand, Jr.
N.C. Natural Heritage Program
Division of Parks and Recreation
1615 MSC
Raleigh, NC 27699-1615

Office: (919) 715-8687
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