Trinity River Christmas Bird Count
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December 27, 2006:
I did my first CBC yesterday (up in Liberty County) and it wore me out! You basically all show up in the morning, the coordinator breaks you into groups. Then the coordinator gives you a packet with your geographical area that you need to search, a checklist of birds (local to the area), and a description of some of the best spots in that area to see birds.
We were short on people, and since I was the strapping young lad, they stuck me on a boat in the private area of the Trinity River Wildlife Reserve to search for ducks (area 2). Then there was normal birding walking on top of that, still in area 2. I was so sore!
During lunch, everyone gets together to compare notes. Then everyone makes a mental note of the common/fairly common birds that no one has seen yet so they can try to spend a little extra effort attuning their eyes for those birds. This year, it was blackbirds. At lunch, no one had seen a Red-winged blackbird, Brewer's Blackbird or Brown-headed Cowbird!
After lunch, we drove around area 6, since there weren't enough people to check it in the morning. We found our Brewer's Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbirds, but it wasn't enough. For the entire group, we saw 86 species of bird, which was a disappointing year. By the end of the day, there was still not a single person who saw a Red-winged blackbird (well enough to identify them). Over the last 10 years (for the Trinity River CBC), they averaged 91 with a high of 97.
I, personally, saw 3 new life birds, bringing my count to 211. I even helped the organizer, who has been birding for 15 years, see his first Winter Wren. I almost tied my highest ever single-day bird count with 45 species. My biggest ever was the first day of my road trip to South Texas, where I saw 46 species of birds over multiple counties.
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