Mokka mit Schlag

2010-January 6 2023
Best Dog Ever. We miss you so much.

2022 was a slower year than 2021. I still haven’t left the country since Covid, but I did make four trips to New Orleans and two to Arizona, so there were a few life birds to add. I finished the year with 365 species total and 19 life birds as well as a Brooklyn first Townsend’s Warbler.
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2021 was a low but not super low year thanks to quarantine. I did make two trips to New Orleans and one to Arizona. Plus there were some really good and one spectacular bird in Brooklyn this year. Also worth noting that I set a new personal best for a Brooklyn year with 216 species. I finished the year with 311 species total and 18-19 life birds including a spectacular surprise of Gray-breasted Martin on my home patch at Prospect Park.

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This was a super low year thanks to quarantine. I finished the year with 197 species, less than I’ve seen probably since I started counting. I never left New York City and rarely left Brooklyn. I didn’t even get to Jamaica Bay. Nonetheless I did get one life bird in 2020, a King Eider that was hanging out at the Brooklyn Army Terminal pier in December.

Besides the Eider, I added five birds to my Kings County list including:

• A Western Tanager that spent a week or so in Greenwood Cemetery.
• A Short-eared Owl flying around the Fountain Ave. Landfill on the Christmas Bird Count
• Cliff Swallows that nested at Canarsie Beach Park under the Belt Parkway
• A Harlequin Duck at Sheepshead Bay early in the year

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It’s almost a truism that the incumbent has an advantage in U.S. elections. In many cases that’s true. Congressional incumbents very rarely lose, for instance. But in modern presidential elections? I don’t see it.
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eBird tells me I saw a reasonable 346 species last year. There are probably a few here and there I didn’t report. 165 of those were in Kings County. That’s not awful given that I didn’t take any international trips or birding tours last year. Thanks to a Shearwater pelagic out of Monterey, I added 4 life birds to my list:

• Black-footed Albatross Shearwater Journeys_09/15/2019_Leg 5/6 US-CA 15 Sep 2019
• Sabine’s Gull Shearwater Journeys_09/15/2019_Leg 3/6 US-CA 15 Sep 2019
• Red Phalarope Shearwater Journeys_09/15/2019_Leg 1/6 US-CA 15 Sep 2019
• Ashy Storm-Petrel Monterey Bay pelagic–inshore Monterey Harbor to Pt. Pinos (MTY Co.)
• Black-throated Magpie-Jay Kit Carson Park US-CA 23 Aug 2019

That’s actually five species, but the Black-throated Magpie-Jay isn’t officially countable in the U.S. since it likely either is or descends from escaped pets and does not have an established population. Still a gorgeous bird though.

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