2022 Lisle-Arboretum Christmas Bird Count Recap
by Carl Giometti
Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, December 12, 2021. Photo by Geoff Williamson.
On December 18, 2022, the 74th Lisle-Arboretum Christmas Bird Count was held. Thanks to a great deal of outreach by the Chicago Ornithological Society community, this count featured nearly 100 volunteers, once again ensuring that Illinois's oldest CBC was also its largest. Heading into the day, the weather was frigid, only just crossing above 20 degrees in the late afternoon. However, the cold temperatures did not dampen the enthusiasm of the counters nor their ability to put together a spectacular count day.
During most counts, the morning brings the best birding and the afternoon turns into a bit of a slog, with tiredness and winter's chill setting in. This year, though, brought a wonderful jolt of energy that provided an exclamation point as the effort wound down. Thousands of Sandhill Cranes began appearing overhead in the mid afternoon, and the river of migrating birds continued through sunset. Getting an accurate count and avoiding double-counting is always difficult with birds so conspicuous as they bugle their way through the count circle. In the end, upwards of 7,500 cranes were tallied.
The cranes shared their end of the day highlight reel with a Spotted Towhee found in area 5, causing many to make a short detour to tick the counts 3rd record of the rare sparrow.
Congregating at Imperial Oak Brewery, dozens of tired but happy counters shared and reviewed their data.
Highlights
Of the common birds, all the recent trends continued: Woodpecker populations continued their upward trend, American Crow populations (decimated by West Nile Virus) continued their struggle. White-breasted Nuthatch numbers remained solid. Most other birds tracked their 15-year averages.
One nice surprise was that, after disappointing numbers last year, sparrow numbers improved. Our two main over-wintering sparrows, American Tree Sparrow and Dark-eyed Junco, both posted well above average counts.
Thanks to new counters who have intimate knowledge of some particular hotspots, Eastern Screech-Owls posted one of their best counts in the past decade, with 33 birds and a whopping 17 found in Area 3 alone.
There remained just enough open water that our wintering duck species count was fairly typical. Only Lesser Scaup and Red-breasted Merganser were not found.
Of the rare birds found were the previously mentioned Spotted Towhee, but also Cackling and Greater White-fronted Goose (mixed in with migrating flocks alongside the cranes), Trumpeter Swan, Horned Grebe, Iceland Gull, and a new-to-the-count bird: a very cold Ovenbird.
Overall, the count finished with a very strong 84 different species tallied and over 35,000 individual birds counted. Thank you, again, to all counters! We had a number of first time CBCers, and we hope it was a fun and enriching experience. We look forward to seeing everyone next year!