Secondly, as I went to sync Curtis and my all-time yard lists on the excel spreadsheet- I found several tallying errors on my all-time yard list which had been tallied on paper only. I had double-counted Crow and Cooper's Hawk, but had failed to include (!!) Red-tailed Hawk, Mallard, Mourning Dove, Great Horned Owl, and Brown-headed Cowbird! So I lost 2 but gained 5, for a net gain of 3, taking me to 82 all time. The NOHA is actually 82/46, not 79/46. Now I am only 2 behind him all-time. Of course, now I am ready for all the belly-aching and foul-crying to begin- so BRING IT ON.
Finally, note that I have posted the spreadsheet of our tallies at google docs. You three and I have full editing rights, but the public can only view this document. Look at the top of the scoreboard for the hyperlink to the table for viewing. Pretty neat tool!
The difference it makes living in a small island on the edge of a continent, in a more or less urban context, with a tiny garden (yard)...doubt I have seen much over 30 species in or from my garden EVER, and I've always lived in this one house! Still waiting to add Little Egret as a flyover: my brother saw one fly over the bottom of our street once, and I have seen them fly over nearby streets, so that should be possible...
ReplyDelete(P.S. The above mentioned garden is in Ireland, where Little Egrets breed...wouldn't want any of you to think that I was suppressing/stringing!)
ReplyDeleteGlad to see the Roy D. Mercer is not far from your mind's eye, Slobber, I mean Slager. How big a boy are ya?
ReplyDeleteHarry, glad to have someone from across the pond interested in our inane little competition! Thanks for the clarification on stringing, we have a zero-tolerance policy for that nonsense in this crew. And by the way, when I finally have a small egret fly over the house here, I will be counting those plumes...
ReplyDeleteDave - I just consider it my responsibility to keep you in your place. Now hurry up and get some good southern birds to pad our combined species tally! I'm thinking BLVU, CACH, YTWA...maybe a flyover STKI (I mean, you ARE south anyway). Caleb and I want to see some GOODS coming from you. We're depending on you to produce. If you do, that may help you save face.
ReplyDeleteCaleb - How are we all to trust your listing data if it seems you have a problem with sloppiness? You were just frightened by my sudden move today and you had to come up with SOME sort of explaination to keep you in the game...I understand what you're up to.
ReplyDeleteHarry- nice to see you're watching the madness; now you have a clearer picture what freaks we really are! Definitely surprised to hear how poor your yard list is with that many years under the belt. Have you spent lots of time outside looking up or would your neighbors wonder what you're up to?
ReplyDeleteI have seen about 48 species in TOTAL for my garden, and heard another 2 or so (Mistle Thrush and Fieldfare, the latter on migration by night). This poor showing is down to a number of factors:
ReplyDelete1)My garden is very small, and most nearby gardens have NO vegetation at all, making our isolated patch of bushes less accessible.
2)We aren't really near enough to water to pick up many flyover duck etc (even Mallard is scarce as a flyover here).
3)I couldn't really sit out on the bathroom roof with my bins, as I would like to do on a day when I was going nowhere more exciting, as the neighbours would certainly see me...
4)Much of the Irish list is made up of various vagrant species, with the number of core species quite small.