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Jordan Lake (NC) CBC



         The Jordan Lake (NC) Christmas Bird Count on 12/31/00 was 
certainly a beautiful, if cold, way to spend the last day of the 
millennium.  Our counters identified 95 species, only a bit above our 
average of 93 for the preceding ten years.  However, our total of 22,906 
individual birds set a new record, beating our previous high of 22,580 set 
in 1998.  Perhaps our 58 birders in 24 parties (1 shy of the record) and 
147 party-hours (only 9 shy of the record) had something to do with this, 
but I suspect the very cold weather (15F at dawn), frozen ponds and 
streams, and low water at Jordan Lake (213.7 feet vs. a normal 216 feet) 
played more of a role.  It's interesting to note that our neighboring count 
in Chapel Hill also had 95 species, just a week earlier.

         Will Cook, covering Harris Lake and Jordan Lake at Seaforth by 
himself, deserves special kudos for his accomplishments.  First, it should 
be noted that this was Will's fourth CBC in four days.  (I was on two of 
those earlier counts with him, so I know how hard he worked.  But while I 
took a day off on Saturday, Will did yet another count!)  For his efforts, 
Will not only had the highest species total for any party (61), he also 
found the one species that had never been seen on our count before, a 
carefully documented female Greater Scaup.  Though Lesser Scaup have been 
fairly regular winter visitors in the Piedmont, Greaters have been much 
less common.  And identifying a female is no mean feat.  Will also found 2 
Sedge Wrens, only the second time this species has been found in our 
circle.  And Will estimated 1100 American Coots on Harris Lake.  This more 
than doubled last year's previous high of 487.  Finally, though Will 
officially turned in a count of only 1,500 Ring-billed Gulls, he stopped at 
the Rt. 64 bridge toward the end of the day and estimated some 5,000 Gulls 
in that area.  It was a tough call on my part, but in the end I decided to 
report a total of 7,000 Ring-billeds (adjusting for some overlap), making 
this our second highest count for that species (8,600 in 1989).

         Perhaps the rest of us might have just stayed home and let Will do 
all the work.  But in fact, we all did our share of the work and did turn 
in what turns out to be some pretty impressive numbers.  Doug Shadwick and 
Shelley Theye found only our second record for Long-tailed Duck (nee, 
Oldsquaw) and our fourth record for Common Goldeneye.  And Steve Graves and 
Jane Lewis established our third record for Orange-crowned Warbler.  The 
Canvasbacks seen by Brian Bockhahn, Tom Howard, and (of course) Will Cook 
were only the second record of this species in the past 10 years.

And we were all responsible for adding numbers to create many new record 
highs for our count.  These highs, with previous highs and years in 
parentheses, include:  88 Horned Grebes (75 last year), 1075 Double-crested 
Cormorants (903 last year), 103 Great Blue Herons (100 in 1998), 353 Canada 
Geese (176 in 1996), 447 Hooded Mergansers (391 in 1998), 16 Bald Eagles 
(12 last year), 1113 American Coots (487 last year), 12 Barred Owls (10 in 
1997), 25 Red-headed Woodpeckers (22 in 1989), 164 Red-bellied Woodpeckers 
(156 last year), 61 Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (59 last year), 365 Tufted 
Titmice (275 in 1998), 46 White-breasted Nuthatches (39 last year), 4 House 
Wrens (ties 4 in 1997), 27 Winter Wrens (ties last year), 2 Sedge Wrens (1 
in 1980), 123 Hermit Thrushes (92 last year), 3455 American Robins (3039 in 
1981), and 243 Pine Warblers (226 in 1993).  With the Greater Scaup, that's 
over 20% of the total species seen!

It should also be noted that our totals for Ring-billed Gulls and Downy 
Woodpeckers were our second highest, and for Herring Gulls and Ruby-crowned 
Kinglets, our third highest.  Our total of 363 Golden-crowneds was below 
our average of 407, but apparently neither kinglet species seems to have 
suffered from last year's heavy snowfall as some had speculated.  That is 
not to say that kinglets were not killed in that snowstorm.  They may have 
been.  But if so, they have been succeeded by good numbers this year.  And 
as for speculations, how about this one:  Could our record numbers for 
three species of woodpeckers (and relatively high numbers of Downys and 
Hairys) have anything to do with the 'ripening' of dead trees in the 
aftermath of our recent hurricanes (Fran, in particular)?

Of course, we did have some noticeable misses this year.  No Harriers, 
Turkeys, Bobwhites, Woodcock, or Shrikes.  No Common Yellowthroats or 
Baltimore Orioles.  And this is clearly not a finch year:  no Pine Siskins 
or Crossbills, and only a few Grosbeaks and Purple Finches.  Also no 
Red-breasted Nuthatches.

         We had 58 birders in 24 parties.  They put in 147 party hours (114 
on foot, 33 by car), 356 miles (101 on foot, 255 by car), and 9 hours and 
18.5 miles owling.  The weather was cold (15F to 36F) with winds increasing 
from calm at dawn to 10-15 mph in the afternoon.  The sky was clear all day 
and there was no precipitation.  Small ponds were frozen, as was water in 
shallow or slow-moving creeks.  Jordan Lake and the Haw River were open.
***********************************************
Norman Budnitz         919-684-3592 (day)
nbudnitz@duke.edu      919-383-0553 (eve)
                        919-660-7293 (fax)

(work)	Department of Biology, Duke University
	Box 90338, Durham NC 27708-0338
(home)	4115 Garrett Drive, Durham NC 27705-8005

PROGRESS: the victory of laughter over dogma.
(Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas)