some impressive scarce/rare landbird totals for December

As the month of December draws to a close, I’ve compiled the month’s totals for a bunch of our scarce and rare winter-season passerines for San Diego County, below. There are some very impressive totals here. Unfortunately, in most (though not all) cases these high numbers are almost certainly NOT indicative of growing avian populations. Neither are they correlated with a boom in excellent wintering habitat–given the seemingly incessant need by so many people to overly prune or chop down trees. What they do show is the ever-increasing observer coverage in the region.

Tropical Kingbird  6

Western Flycatcher  12  (high)

Gray Flycatcher (west of desert)  12

Vermilion Flycatcher (west of desert)  80  (by far a new record)

Plumbeous Vireo  6  (a bit low)

Cassin’s Vireo  5  (above average)

“Slate-colored”/cismontanus Dark-eyed Junco  21  (high)

White-throated Sparrow  5  (much lower numbers than previous two winters)

Green-tailed Towhee  11

Hooded Oriole  7  (high)

Bullock’s Oriole  39  (above average)

Northern Waterthrush  3

Black-and-white Warbler  5

Nashville Warbler  13

American Redstart  6

Yellow Warbler  40

Black-throated Gray Warbler  32

Hermit Warbler  3

Wilson’s Warbler  20

Summer Tanager  33  (no longer surprising!)

Western Tanager  81  (high)

–Paul Lehman, San Diego