2020 Year in Review

It was 2020…  Need I say anything more?  The concern over Covid exposure changed my focus from large statebirding trips, or even travelling to chase a single new statebird a short distance away, to birding quite locally.  Don’t get me wrong - exploring local birding spots was still fun, especially as I continued to learn more about my new area in western NC.  Plus I found a number of really nice birds nearby.  But my first love continues to be adding birds to my state (and province) lists.  And with my recent retirement I had plenty of time to take a lot of short- and longer-distance trips.  But all of that will have to wait till we can return to more normal times.

There were still some nice highlights in my nearly daily birding trips.  All results were entered in eBird, with 672 checklists entered in 2020.  Key highlights are summarized below.

Statebirds

The year started off quite well with a January trip to the SC and NC coasts in conjunction with the annual winter meeting of the Carolina Bird Club.  I added 8 in NC and 9 in SC including a number of rarities.  But then Covid hit, eliminating any trip longer than 90 minutes or so.  I ended up adding 75 birds to my state and province lists during the year to bring my “total ticks” tally to 14,849.  (Total ticks is the sum of my state and province lists.)  I saw new birds in just 3 states – 35 in NC, 29 in SC, and 1 in GA.  Key NC additions among birds I found – Pacific Loon on the coast, Lapland Longspur, Wilson’s Phalarope, and Common Redpoll.  Notable SC additions were the 2nd state record of Western Meadowlark, a rare Bullock’s Oriole at a feeder on the coast, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to be one of the few to see the first state record of Sage Thrasher.  With these 2020 additions, my NC and SC lists are now my 10th and 11th best state lists.  I also had additions or deletions to 9 other state lists and 1 province list due to ABA lumps, splits, and changes in how exotics can be counted.

Maps of my state and province lists are inserted below.

Yard Birding

Birding in my yard continues to be amazing – which is certainly helpful during these Covid times when travel is limited.  By the end of the year my yard list was at 141 in just 16 months, adding 45 during the year.  I’m now up to 31 species of warblers, with notable additions being a singing Louisiana Waterthrush in August (there is no water nearby), and a Wilson’s Warbler at my feeder in December.  I was also lucky enough to find a couple rarities in the yard.  First and foremost was a White-winged Dove that called briefly for 3 days starting on 6/8 – unfortunately I was never able to see it.  Then came a migrant Dickcissel on 9/7, a flyover pair of Evening Grosbeaks on 11/8, and then a Selasphorus, sp. hummingbird (most likely a Rufous) feeding on camellia flowers in the yard for 2 days on 11/30-12/1. 

On 8/25/20, my 1-year anniversary of moving to NC, I put together a wish list of 44 potential new birds for the yard.  Since then, I’ve seen 9 of these targets in the yard, and 2 others that weren’t even on my radar screen.

County Listing

I never was into county listing before I moved to NC.  But with such limited travel opportunities during these Covid times, county listing gives you another thing to look forward to.  Plus many local birders are not only into county listing, but county year listing as well.  It’s contagious!  I especially focused on my home county of Henderson, where I finished with the 2nd highest count this year, even though I wasn’t bitten by the county listing bug till well into the year.  I’m also tracking county lists in 4 other NC counties and 2 in SC.  And my county listing trips yielded some good birds as well – the first eBird records of Red Crossbill in Rutherford County and Forster’s Tern in Polk County.

Life List

2020 was the second year in a row that I didn’t see a new species for my life lists – the only 2 years in my 50+ years of birding without seeing a new species.  Not coincidentally, these past 2 years were the only recent years when I haven’t taken any significant birding trips.  But there were 3 revisions to ABA’s official lists in 2020 from which I netted 1 new life bird – I lost Northwestern Crow when it was lumped with American Crow, added one when Mexican Duck was split from Mallard, and added another when Red-vented Bulbul was determined to be countable based on an introduced population in Houston, TX.  That gives me 759 in the ABA Continental and US regions, and 739 in the Lower 48.

Here’s to 2021 and Beyond

I would still like to pursue my life-long goal of seeing at least half of the total species of each state in the Lower 48 (that was the old ABA threshold to be able to report your state total).  I’ve exceeded that threshold in 46 states – only MT and OR remain.  I had planned a summer trip to MT and ID in 2019 but had to cancel to prepare for our move to NC.  And I hoped to do that same trip again in 2020 but Covid got in the way.  Now it’s looking like it could be iffy in summer 2021 as well.  I’d also like to reach 15,000 total ticks – just 151 to go.  In order to reach that goal, I’d need more than just trips to MT and OR.  The next low hanging fruit are Manitoba and Saskatchewan where my province lists are less than 50 in each case.  Certainly doable once I can get back on the road and into the air.

Then I hope to pursue more statebirds in the region in coastal NC, SC and VA, as well as northern GA, eastern TN, and southwestern VA.  There were a dizzying number of rarities in the region at the end of 2020 that I just couldn’t head out to pursue.  Not to mention a number of potential new life birds that would require a plane flight to chase.  Most frustrating. 

Definitely looking forward to those post-Covid times...

Eared Grebe, Lake Julian, NC, December 15, 2020

When I moved to western NC in August 2019 I developed a list of possible new NC statebird targets.  The list had 36 species that were reported on at least 1% of checklists in any week of the year in the 15 westernmost NC counties.  In October 2020 I added Mourning Warbler to my NC statelist which was the 35th of these targets.  Only Long-tailed Duck remains from my initial target list.  That pretty much means that any further additions to my NC list in the mountains will be rare for the region – some rarer than others.

And one of those rarer species was discovered on 12/15, starting with this text from Aaron Steed on the Blue Ridge Birders text list– “Probable Eared Grebe at Lake Julian”.  I was already heading out the door minutes later when Aaron confirmed the ID as the first eBird record for Eared Grebe in Buncombe County.  And only the 4th record for western NC.

When I arrived at Lake Julian I was surprised to not find any other birders.  I would have thought that a bird this rare would have attracted lots of folks.  I set up my scope and started scanning the lake.  A distant flock of about 60 Ring-billed Gulls with a Bonaparte’s was nice, but the only diving waterfowl I could find were 2 Ruddy’s and a Bufflehead.  Just then another birder came by who had seen the Grebe earlier.  He recounted how it was actually quite close feeding in a small arm of the reservoir right in front of us.  And then right on cue a Grebe swam by practically at our feet.  I was about to check it off as a new statebird when I looked at it in my binocs and realized it was just a Horned Grebe, not yet reported at the lake that morning.  That certainly complicates things.  I looked back at the Grebe to make sure, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t turn it into the Eared Grebe. 

Then Bob Butler came by.  He too had seen the target bird earlier and described how it was feeding along the edges of the reservoir arm, rather than toward the middle.  Plus it was diving often.  So I did a very slow scan of the water edges but came up empty.  If it was preferring the edges of this arm of the reservoir, I wondered if it had moved on to the edges of another arm of water.  There is another larger arm just to the east, so I walked over in that direction and started to scan.  On a first scan I didn’t find anything on the water.  Then on a next pass I spotted a Grebe along the far shore which dove just after I spotted it.  It was too short a view to see many field marks, and certainly not enough to tell if I had my target, or whether it was just the Horned Grebe.  It popped up about 25 seconds later, and on this brief view before it dove I noticed that the back end of the bird appeared “fluffy” with expanded feathers on its flanks.  The next time it came up I got a better view and could see darker cheeks and longer, thin neck – I had the Eared Grebe.  Unfortunately it was too far, and spent too little time above water, for a phonescoped photo.  Here’s a photo of the arm of the lake where it fed, and in fact where it continued at least until the end of December.

Eared Grebe was #310 for my NC list – the 7th eastern state where I’ve seen this species as a rarity.  This western species is certainly known for its vagrancy in the east.  The blue states are those where I’ve seen it across its regular range in the west, with cross-hatched Missouri as the last state where I still need it in its regular range.