Well, here we are, it was 2020 all over again due to the covid-19 pandemic — at least for us. We did not travel, but we did a little birding close to home.
- Total life birds: 1114. Two armchair ticks with taxonomic changes. There were actually a few losses but more gains, although I confess to no longer remembering what they were.
- Total ABA-area birds: 587. Same (thus, the lifers were world birds).
- Total state birds: 333. The most unexpected was a Roseate Spoonbill that appeared at a roadside pond and later a retention basin only a few miles from home. Although we heard about it within an hour or so of someone posting a “what is this?” to social media, there were mobs of people there. We got to see it right from the car, and did get to lean out the window and talk to an old friend. A Neotropic Cormorant in Wayne County was one of several in southeast Michigan this year (one pair attempted to nest in Macomb County). Only slightly less strange, but much less attractive, than the spoonbill. A LeConte’s Sparrow was the final expected pickup.
Home county
- Total birds, Washtenaw County: 245. The spoonbill, plus a flyover Mississippi Kite from the back porch!
- Total birds in my home township of Lodi Township: 205. The kite, along with Common Merganser and Sedge Wren.
- Yard birds: 165. The kite.
Former work county. Again, I don’t get down there much, but am always looking to add to the county total.
- Wayne County: 273. The cormorant, and Wilson’s Phalarope, which was the first nesting record in the county in many decades.
- Total Dearborn birds: 231.
- Total birds at work: 203.