It’s officially 2025! With that, the yearly bird list resets and each bird is a new one for the year. This reset leads many birders to rush out and make the first a big day of birding. I am one of those birders, eager for the new year of new lists and new birds. While every year I try for as many species as possible, I have been pretty lax in going for yearly totals, this year though, is a bit different. Sometime last year, I decided I wanted to try for a loftier goal, a goal of 230 species in a county, Onondaga County in New York to be exact.
As the clocks changed and 2025 finally arrived, the hunt for birds began, unfortunately for us up in Central New York, the weather had other plans. The day began with a downpour, which continued throughout the day, the gusts of wind and the dropping temperatures added an extra unpleasantness to the day.
The first birds of the day came from several Canada Geese and an American Crow that were hanging out in a farmer’s field I passed on a quick trip to the store. These two early morning species landed me number one in the county for a short period (number one of only one person having submitted a list so far that year….).
Our next official trip of the year was to a nearby area and added Red-tailed Hawk, Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, European Starling, Eastern Bluebird, American Goldfinch, and Northern Cardinal to the tally. As we headed south, many flocks of Rock Pigeons were seen on the telephone wires along the roads.
From there, we traveled farther south, into the southernmost point in the county, Morgan Hill State Forest. The weather was still horrible, with chilly winds and rain pouring down on us in our car, the birds must have been hunkered down as well as we only saw Black-capped Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets and Brown Creeper.
Traveling back towards Syracuse, we made a quick stop at Rand Tract Park, which usually attracts some waterfowl. In the open pond, we saw several hundred Mallards, with a nice mix of Common Mergansers, American Black Ducks, Ring-billed Gulls and singles of a Mute Swan, Wood Duck and a Bald Eagle perched high above in a tree.
Now in Syracuse, we stopped at the inner harbor, with hopes of getting a few gull species. Unfortunately, there wasn’t the expected number of gulls we hoped for, but did add American Herring Gull and Great Black-backed Gull to the list. Going around Onondaga Lake we also found several Red-breasted Mergansers.
Heading into Baldwinsville, we made a quick stop into Mercer Park, while there wasn’t much there at the time, a single Double-crested Cormorant was lazily swimming along in the river, adding one more species to the total.
With rain turning into snow, there was one last stop for the day, Beaver Lake Nature Center. At first, the lake looked frozen, but out towards the far end of the lake were several rafts of waterfowl. There we saw Canada Geese, Hooded Mergansers, Common Mergansers, Redheads and Ring-necked Ducks. While standing there scanning through the ducks, several passerines were calling, including Brown Creeper, Black-capped Chickadees and a White-breasted Nuthatch.
While not reaching the target of 40 species, the wind and weather was not in our favor, leading to ending the day with 28 species and being ranked second in the county. Hopefully, better days are in our future and I can get my numbers and rank up.
Until next time, Happy Birding,
Kayla
Great write-up. It was almost like being there.