Mid-Valley Mid-Winter Birding Blitz Species List | January 14, 2020

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Tuesday, January 14, 2020, 8:15AM – 2PM
Weather: Sunny and breezy at times
 

Species Identified

Mallard Ring-necked Duck Barrow’s Goldeneye Common Merganser Wild Turkey Rock Pigeon Eurasian Collared-Dove Wilson’s Snipe Bald Eagle Cooper’s Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Golden Eagle Belted Kingfisher Lewis’s Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Shrike (species) Steller’s Jay Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay Black-billed Magpie American Crow Common Raven Black-capped Chickadee Mountain Chickadee Bushtit American Dipper Townsend’s Solitaire American Robin European Starling House Finch Pine Siskin American Goldfinch Spotted Towhee Song Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco House Sparrow

 

Comments:

The “blitz” is a day of winter birding with ACES in the mid-valley, with the goals of exploring winter bird activity, abundance, and behaviors as well as reporting the day’s observations to eBird: a citizen science effort of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Today was the first official Blitz, modeled after a recon day conducted one year ago, and ACES plans to make it an annual field trip! Highlights were a flock of about 30 Bushtits in Basalt, several Golden Eagles in the general mid-valley area, four Bald Eagles along the rivers, a flock of suburban Basalt turkeys, a Wilson’s Snipe in a ranch ditch, a shrike (a quick look; not enough to determine species), and a Lewis’s Woodpecker at on Hooks Lane. We identified 35 species during today’s blitz, with a good representation of raptors. It will be interesting to start building lists for comparisons in the future, and we hope you’ll join us for this fun and eye-opening day of birding next year! 

~ Rebecca Weiss, ACES Bird Guide 

 

Photo by Mark Fuller