I thought I'd take a minute to say a couple of things on the GBBC numbers. First, wanted to alert people to the fact that the numbers showing up in the totals are NOT the actual numbers of birds believed to be seen at a location. The system literally sums everything together that comes in. An example of this is the number of robins from Yakima. The current total is over 200,000. As the regional editor for WA I have gotten many messages on this. We don't know exactly how many robins are in Yakima, but the vast majority comes from the two counts I summed on Saturday Feb.14 in a message to Tweeters, ~93K on Friday and 98K from Saturday of the same roost. Summed together these would be 191K. Similar is other species that seem high, the actual data crunching can and does account for this but the raw numbers seem gaudy sometimes.
I am working through the flagged and other reports that seem high in numbers or out of place. I'm trying to catch all things I see, however I can't do it all. Instead of emailing citizen science, you can also email me directly if you see something that seems out of place for your area. I'd be happy to look into it. The filters for WA flags things that are above filters set for that area. However, some things get by them, one thing I've noticed this year is that many glaucous gull records and many western gull concentrations are coming from the puget sound area, well away from the coastal locations. I try to find them, but again I'm only one person and can't find everything.

Carol asked about the Osprey. There are birds from Vancouver and a bird from Federal Way. The Ferruginous Hawk comes from Walla Walla County.

Again thanks to everyone who has participated in the count! If you do have an observation flagged, be patient I will get to them fairly quick and probably will ask some field notes or a photo, so be prepared.

Thanks.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA