I have been involved with CBCs for almost as long as I have been birding. Some of my earliest birding memories come from the Hamilton County CBC in central Indiana. The compiler was actually the leader of the first bird hike my mom ever went on, and it wasn't long before he had all of us out participating in the count. It has become one of the birding events that I look most forward to each year. One of my favorite things about the CBCs is that you can participate in multiple counts without even having to travel very far from your home. I regularly participate in three or four counts but could easily do more than five if I had more time.
On December 14th, the first day that counts could officially begin, I travelled to Linton, Indiana to participate in the Goose Pond CBC. My designated area needed a lot of additional coverage, so I recruited a big group of birders to help out. This group included two young birders that are involved with the Indiana Young Birders Club and Chad Williams of Birding! A Growing Obsession! All of our days started off a little slow in our units, but both of the young birders picked up a few lifers. The best bird in my unit was a single Wilson's Snipe that we accidentally flushed while walking on the dike.
After meeting up with all of the other participants for lunch and tallying the morning results (we had 102 species), we headed out to hunt down some of the missing species. While looking around Main Pool West, I got a call from a friend asking us to come over and confirm his group's sighting of some Brewer's Blackbirds. We hurried over and found at least three Brewer's with tons of Red-winged Blackbirds and a few Rusties. Overall we had a great day, and it looks like the count ended up with 107 species and will most likely be the highest count in the state!
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Rusty Blackbird |
Where will you be participating in CBCs this year?
-Rob
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