After yesterday's scouting trip I decided not to try owling this morning. Patricia (Rydzewski) was happy to hear that... We decided instead to get breakfast and start the 49th Monroe, MI Christmas Bird Count at first light.
As we left the Denny's in Monroe a pair of Cooper's Hawks flew over the car and gave us our first birds of the day. We probably should've quit after that. It would turn out that the weather was very cooperative, but the birds weren't. With temperatures reaching 46F and skies clearing the day was great for photography; the birds couldn't be found.
We drove the roads south of Kelly Rd, east of Dixie Hwy, and north of Erie Rd in Monroe Co. and all we could find were European Starlings. Lots of them. Horned Larks were absent, and our only real taste of birding came when we scoped hundreds of Ring-billed Gulls, Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye from the pier at Luna Pier. The rising Sun nicely illuminated the gulls roosting on the ice behind us so some digiscoping was welcomed.





Lake Erie was covered with widely-scattered gull and a few rafts of Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye. The coal piles were covered with another 1000 mixed Herring/Ring-billed Gulls. Though I kept looking I couldn't find any Great Black-backed Gulls. Then, Pat and Tim pointed them out to me. 57 Great Black-backed Gulls were roosting on one of the roofs next to the coal pile!
As we returned to the plant proper the goal was to look for the resident Peregrine Falcons. The pair had successfully hacked 4 young this summer, so the odds for seeing one today was good. Sure enough, as the plant buildings came into view I spotted a dark bird high up in the blue sky. It was just starting to tuck its wings in, then go into a stoop straight down into a flock of Rock Pigeons above the roof of one building. The Peregrine Falcon did not pull up until just above the roof and disappeared from view. We found it atop the "Chopping Block" that Tom described as the location where they typically feed after a kill. I managed a short video and a few digiscoped stills from a very noisy mezzanine.


As reports from other areas began to trickle in it would become apparent that this was a SLOW day everywhere. We would finish with only 63 species and 29,578 total birds.
Once again I am grateful for people like Frank Rand (Consumers Energy), Jessica Fletcher (USFWS), and Kristen LeForce and Tom Foxworthy (DTE Energy) for help getting permits to access portions of the count area. Thanks also go to all of the volunteers who gave time and miles to make this a special day regardless of outcome.
Included in the table is the 49-year average for the Monroe, MI CBC for each species. The last column shows percentage relative to the average for each species. Cells highlighted blue are species who's numbers are greater than the average, and those highlighted red are below the average. Bob Pettit added 10-year and 20-year comparisons to these values: