The arrival of finches from the north has always been an event that birders here in Maine and New England have looked forward to during the cold of winter. Common redpolls and the much rarer hoary redpolls, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks, pine.
Are there any of you out there that remember the days when people would complain about how evening grosbeaks were eating them out of house and home? Back in the 1970s, we remember bird lovers everywhere talking about buying a hundred pounds of.
In 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman proposed that Americans celebrate the Christmas season by counting birds instead of hunting them, and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count was born. This year’s survey, which is still among the largest citizen-science.
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Something Wild: The Winter Finch Forecast
It’s a big deal for birders. So much so that enthusiastic birders have been known to base winter birding plans on this forecast, even driving hundreds of miles to spots deemed favorable for seeing White-winged Crossbills or Pine Grosbeaks.
But who makes these predictions, and what are these finch forecasts based on?
Enter Tyler Hoar, a freelance biologist and ecologist from Oshawa, Ontario. He’s recently taken the reins in predicting finch winter migration patterns from the legendary Ron Pittaway who started this citizen science project some 20 years ago.
According to Tyler;