It was a weird CBC, with pretty much no snow except in the highest parts of the circle, and with temps into the 40?s. The weather was not too kind, though, with a bit of a breeze, and on-and-off showers. We had some open water in some ponds, and we had snowless, unfrozen fields, so it?s no surprise that we set a record for Canada Goose and Bufflehead, and nearly for Mallard. Other distributions are harder to figure. We had low counts for Hairy Woodpecker (1), Dark-eyed Junco, House Finch, and House Sparrow, yet we had 3 LEWIS?S WOODPECKERS, 2 WHITE-HEADED WOODPECKERS, and set a High Count for COMMON REDPOLL (yet had a near-record low for PINE SISKIN at 2).

Best birds were a CALIFORNIA SCRUB-JAY, perhaps the first in Cle Elum since December 15, 2005, when we found one on the trial run of the Cle Elum CBC (and being the trial run, the lists were not able to be entered into the CBC database). So this was officially a new bird for the count. Not too unexpectedly, we had an ANNA?S HUMMINGBIRD, just the second time we?ve had one on Count Day (we?ve had a count week bird once as well). I expect sighting of these will increase in the future.

Other species with High Counts included VARIED THRUSH and FOX SPARROW.

Despite the weird climate and distribution of birds, the count was statistically startlingly close to an AVERAGE COUNT, with the number of species (70) just one more than average, same when adding in Count Week birds (72 vs. 71), and Total Birds at 3686 just slightly more than the average of 3606 ? and maybe all of that difference was double-counted Canada Geese.

Thanks to all of the people who helped out this year! We don?t get the highest species tally, but we are one of the highest elevation counts in the state, and thus fill in some details on where the birds are.

== Michael Hobbs
== www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== BirdMarymoor at frontier.com