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It’s an annual tradition here on New Year’s Day to share my “yard list” for the previous year. This is a list of all the birds I’ve seen in my yard over the course of one calendar year, in chronological order. Last year’s list had 87 species. This year, I spent a lot of time birding, and I boosted the count to 114. The list is below, followed by a few thoughts:

1. Mourning Dove
2. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
3. Red-bellied Woodpecker
4. Blue Jay
5. American Crow
6. Carolina Chickadee
7. Tufted Titmouse
8. White-breasted Nuthatch
9. Carolina Wren
10. Eastern Bluebird
11. American Robin
12. Cedar Waxwing
13. American Goldfinch
14. Dark-eyed Junco
15. Song Sparrow
16. Yellow-rumped Warbler
17. Northern Cardinal
18. Red-shouldered Hawk
19. Pileated Woodpecker
20. Northern Flicker
21. White-throated Sparrow
22. Downy Woodpecker
23. European Starling
24. Hermit Thrush
25. Red-tailed Hawk
26. Northern Mockingbird
27. Turkey Vulture
28. American Woodcock *
29. Canada Goose
30. Common Raven
31. Winter Wren
32. Black Vulture
33. Bald Eagle
34. Field Sparrow *
35. House Finch
36. Eastern Phoebe
37. Eastern Meadowlark *
38. Golden-crowned Kinglet
39. Cooper’s Hawk
40. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
41. Sharp-shinned Hawk
42. Belted Kingfisher
43. American Kestrel
44. Brown Creeper
45. Purple Finch
46. Common Grackle
47. Red-breasted Nuthatch
48. Hooded Merganser
49. Hairy Woodpecker
50. Red-winged Blackbird
51. Wood Duck
52. Brown-headed Cowbird
53. Pine Warbler
54. Chipping Sparrow
55. Rock Pigeon
56. Fish Crow
57. Eastern Towhee
58. Great Blue Heron
59. Brown Thrasher
60. Tree Swallow
61. Osprey
62. Louisiana Waterthrush
63. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
64. Green Heron
65. Barn Swallow
66. Palm Warbler
67. Broad-winged Hawk
68. Blue-headed Vireo
69. Merlin *
70. Wild Turkey *
71. Ruby-throated Hummingbird
72. House Wren
73. Wood Thrush
74. Yellow-billed Cuckoo
75. Chimney Swift
76. Spotted Sandpiper
77. White-eyed Vireo
78. Yellow-throated Vireo
79. Red-eyed Vireo
80. Orchard Oriole
81. Baltimore Oriole
82. Black-and-white Warbler
83. Yellow Warbler
84. Indigo Bunting
85. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
86. Great Crested Flycatcher
87. Ovenbird
88. Eastern Kingbird
89. Gray Catbird
90. American Redstart
91. Cape May Warbler
92. Blue-winged Warbler
93. Black-throated Blue Warbler
94. Barred Owl
95. Eastern Screech-Owl
96. Common Yellowthroat
97. Scarlet Tanager
98. Eastern Wood-Pewee
99. Veery
100. Northern Parula
101. Bay-breasted Warbler
102. Canada Warbler
103. Prairie Warbler
104. Grasshopper Sparrow *
105. Magnolia Warbler
106. Acadian Flycatcher
107. Worm-eating Warbler
108. Blue Grosbeak
109. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
110. Summer Tanager
111. Great Egret *
112. Red-headed Woodpecker *
113. Black-throated Green Warbler
114. Philadelphia Vireo

Thoughts and reflections:

1. I made it a priority this year to spend time birding. I got into the habit of going for morning “bird walks” down a rural road near my house, sometimes doing 3 miles, sometimes 4, and sometimes 5 (roundtrip). While I walked, I used the eBird app on my smartphone to keep track of the birds I observed (“observed” = saw or heard). I’ve been resistant to eBird for years, but for some reason a year ago today I decided to dive in. I haven’t looked back. One advantage to the app is that it “gamifies” birding, with a list of the “top 100 eBirders” in a given state, county, or city – ranked by number of species seen (my county list for 2022 stands at 130 species). As spring migration came on, I was thrilled to see my name rising through the ranks, reaching as high as #11, though I’ve slipped back this fall, and ended the year at #28. I posted 254 species lists to eBird for my county over the course of the year.
2. One key service that eBird offers is rare bird alerts – daily emails about unusual birds in a given area. I signed up for rare bird alerts for my county and surrounding counties, and have used them as motivation to go off on special missions to seek out a Loggerhead shrike, some Mississippi kites and Swallow-tailed kites, and a Surf scoter. (Those weren’t in my yard, and so they are not on the list above.) There have also been a couple of rare bird missions that fizzled out with no sightings – one, literally a wild goose chase.
3. Another app that I utilized this year was Merlin, published by the Cornell Laboratory for Ornithology. Merlin has several functions, but the one I relied on and learned from the most was the “Sound ID” feature. Basically, this uses your phone’s microphone to listen for birds, and then provisionally identifies them by their distinctive calls or songs. It is a bit like magic, how effective it is. And there was an update to the software pushed out mid-year which made its performance even more impressive. It’s not perfectly accurate, but it’s pretty darned good. I found it to be an excellent “tutor” for training my ear for the subtleties of various songs.
4. So I listened a lot this year. That’s different from previous years of birding – I made a point to really reach out with my auditory senses to probe the sonic landscape for avian signatures. I got better at it through practice. I still have a long way to go before I am “good at it,” but I’m much better at sound ID than I was a year ago.
5. On eBird, I included birds I saw on my bird walks as part of my yard list. So I’ve got a yard list sensu stricto and a more permissive yard list sensu lato. I’ve added an asterisk (*) to the eight species above that were in the “sensu lato” category – i.e., never actually observed from the viewshed of my property, but observed on my daily walks from my property and back again.
6. Because I traveled to Costa Rica over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the treat of seeing many of these “Virginia yard” species down there too – the neotropical migrants that spend the summer in Albemarle County spend their winters hanging out with toucans and laughing falcons in Central America. So cool! [Examples I noticed include: Great Crested Flycatcher, Yellow Warbler, Red-eyed Vireo, Philadelphia Vireo, Baltimore Oriole, and Spotted Sandpiper.]
7. I joined the Piedmont Virginia Bird Club, and have benefitted from attending several trips on weekend mornings with their crew of dedicated, knowledgeable birders. I also had a student last semester (an active member of our Geology Club) who is an active, expert birder. He has taught me much also.
8. As noted in my commentary from last year, my new home has better birding habitat than my old home – lower elevation, east of the Blue Ridge, more variety of field/forest/lake + ecotones between. I’m really grateful for that change; it’s a hoot to have such variety.
9. Three species I had last year that I did not see this year are: Black-billed cuckoo, Common nighthawk, and Golden eagle.
10. I’ve been doing the same feeders as at last year – hummingbird feeders in summer, and black sunflower in the winter. So that’s a variable that’s been more or less constant.

Happy new year!